I used to wonder why my mom stayed with my father for so long when they were so ferociously ill-matched, but she always said it was better to have an overbearing father than no father at all, and when I look at this photo, of her own dad, Robert, holding her as a baby, I think I understand the marriage better. Robert looks so shrunken and defeated to me here, and her own wave seems to match the sentiment. It wasn’t too long after this that my grandparents divorced.
As a child, Mom kept this picture glued in her scrapbook alongside almost all the other photos we have of him. I wonder how many times she leafed through it after he disappeared, when he was off marrying women and starting service stations and grocery stores and realty firms.
Robert Bruce must have executed the holographic will (below) leaving Mom all of his property around the time my grandmother decided to divorce him.
