My mother claims it was my brother’s bris that made her turn from Judaism. This was August 1965, at my grandparents’ place in Westport, Connecticut, where I spent each summer until I was eight. I was present that day, although I don’t remember: It is the back-and-forth where memory begins. What I have seen are the home movies, shot by my grandfather, like Abraham Zapruder, in washed-out, eight-millimeter film. The greens are too green, the reds too red, and then there are all those faces, round and sweaty, crammed into my grandparents’ low-slung living room. In the center is my brother, dressed in white cotton as if this were a christening, the kernel from which my mother’s disillusion grows. Watching, I try to read her body language, to discover the exact moment the shift occurs. The camera pans and jitters, but her demeanor—her face, her posture—does not change.

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David L. Ulin is the author or editor of ten books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, which was shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he teaches at the University of Southern California.

Photo by Dinty W. Moore