My mother didn’t think much of child actors or their stage mothers. How did you look? my mother would ask eagerly. As a grown woman, sometimes I would call my mother to tell her about somewhere I had just been. And never did I more powerfully feel her love. Never did my mother love me more than when she was looking at an image of me. It was a rickety bridge, and crossing it was often fraught with danger, but it was also our deepest, most intoxicating connection. The camera formed a bridge between my mother and me. This is the first of many times that she will ascribe to me magical powers: Someday she will tell me, in all seriousness, that the glimpse of me on television may have helped to save my grandmother’s life. I am her crowning achievement, her late-in-life only child. Look, there she is-there’s Dani! She wants everyone to see: the doctors, nurses, orderlies. Almond-shaped eyes, her generous mouth outlined and blotted a deep, dark red. And then there is my mother: tall and lovely, her dark hair impeccably coiffed. My unshaven uncles, my hollow-eyed aunts, my father-the oldest son-pacing the room, wild with grief. A baby on television-a widow, hovering near death. A small moment of cheer in a grim situation. Look, Mom, there on TV-that’s your granddaughter!Ī welcome diversion, no doubt. That’s Dani! my mother says loudly into my grandmother’s ear. Then, right on schedule, Cronkite signs off, and I appear. The scene, as I imagine it, is in black-and-white: My parents and aunts and uncles, all younger than I am now, turn to watch the last few minutes of the evening news with Walter Cronkite. ![]() As the shocked, grieving family gathered in my grandmother’s room at Beth Israel hospital, my mother arranged for a television to be wheeled to the foot of her bed. ![]() The following day, at his funeral, my grandmother suffered a massive stroke. ![]() The week the commercial was due to air, my grandfather-my father’s father-died suddenly in his home on Central Park West. (Here is a video of me in a Beech-Nut orange juice ad.) When it was over, I had become the Beech-Nut baby. I gurgled and smiled and ate the strained peaches. My mother watched nervously from the wings, where two backup babies were waiting in case I spat out the food-but I didn’t. I was placed in a high chair, and an actress playing my mother spooned baby food into my mouth. When I was six months old, my mother brought me from our suburban New Jersey home to a television studio in Manhattan. Growing up, Dani Shapiro always felt caught in her mother’s viewfinder-until she found the strength to break free.
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