She looks careworn for good reason. She worked in garment factories doing piecework and organizing the workers. She went to Socialist Workers Party meetings several nights a week. We lived in an apartment on 22nd and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan where the elevated train roared (excitingly) right past my window. Cockroaches swarmed up from the restaurant below through the drain in our kitchen sink. They frightened me, so my mother would sing "La Cucaracha" in hopes I'd find them, or at least her, entertaining. I did. "Bums " pissed in the foyer of our building and passed out on our stoop. I was strongly reprimanded by Dick Fraser for imitating the other kids and casually referring to them that way, as bums. They were "men who were out of work." Dick was in the Merchant Marines and was away for long spells which suited me fine. He came home and took this picture of my mother in this dress. He'd spent his entire paycheck on it -- aqua wool scattered with little silver stars. You can see the stars around the keyhole neckline. He brought her a big bottle of Joy perfume from Paris. He'd gotten it in trade for a carton of Lucky Strikes. She put the perfume on a piece of cotton in her bra and brushed makeup on her legs (nylons were hard to get during wartime). When she kissed me goodnight, looking like this and smelling like "the world's costliest" French perfume, I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He took her out to dinner and dancing. But he couldn't stay faithful.