Preface A TALE OF THREE GENERATIONS My maternal grandparents were married for more than fifty years. He was the town dentist of Carbondale, Pennsylvania, and she was his homemaker partner. As a professional couple in a mostly working-class, coal-mining community, they enjoyed a rich social life. They played bridge on the weekends, going so far as to compete in the statewide circuit of tournaments. They also played golf a couple times a weeksharing a drink with their professional friends afterward as they swapped jokes about Jesus and Moses playing the water hole. With some occasional substitutions, they always seemed to tee up with the same couples: another dentist and his wife, a doctor and his wife, and the owner of the local Ford dealership and his wife. None of these college-educated women worked, though many of them appeared (to me at least) to be a notch or two brighter than their husbands. As my grandmother put it: Grandpa is in charge of the outside, and I am in charge of the inside.

She meant that he took care of mowing the lawn and weeding their vegetable garden, while she was responsible for keeping house and entertaining. But I never thought such an arrangement was quite fair, since I saw the inside to be the 1,200-square-foot house and the outside to stretch to the ends of the known universe. But the system seemedfrom outward appearancesto work. Roles and authority were never questioned. And no one ever raised a voice in their home; in fact, still today, if I need to conjure up a calming, peaceful image, I think of sitting in a rocking chair on their porch, talking about my summer plans. Of course, I remember their lives through the idealized glasses of a child. But there are some basic facts that cannot be disputed. For example, though my grandfather enjoyed his work, he saved and invested his money as best he could so that he could retire early.

And retire early he didby his midfifties the only teeth he pulled were those of my sister and me when we went for our annual checkup in his Depression-era basement chair. Work was simply something you did and hopefully enjoyed, but it was something you strove to leave behind as soon as you were financially able to lead "the good life." For them, the good life entailed paid off mortgages, kids through college, and a condo in Florida where they could spend the winter months and play golf more than twice a week. Perhaps, then, it is fitting (or even ironic) that my grandfather, who lived to a ripe age of eighty-one, died thanks to his favorite leisure activity. While playing golf in Florida in 1989, his friend lost control of the motorized golf cart and ran him over. A few days later, he died of heart failure. Perhaps the absurdity of the accident sparked my grandmother's irrepressible humor. But for the fifteen years afterward that she lived on, she would remark that perhaps it was best that he died the way he did.

"He always said he wanted to die on a golf course after hitting a hole in one," she would say, perhaps unaware of the renowned scene from the filmCaddyshack,which depicted just that. "He'll have to settle for par." The real reason it was all for the best, she'd add in a more serious tone, was that his health was beginning to fail him anywayand it's better, she'd argue, to go quickly than to wither away. My own parents' marriage represented quite a different arrangement to that of my mother's folks. My father did the cooking. Both pursued careers that were ends in and of themselves. Earning money was secondary in the 1960s and '70s. He, an artist, has painted acrylics on canvas long before and long after his day job ended.

He soldiers on, forsaking the New York art world, to which he had moved from Connecticut via Wisconsin.