This photo and its caption were posted by a friend on FB. I both commented on it and shared it with my FB friends, saying: “This is a Mom kitchen to me. I never knew my paternal grandparents and my maternal grandparents lived with us. Our kitchen wasn’t precisely like this, but it was similar. We had a ‘breakfast nook’ that was partially built-in and, if memory serves, it was turquoise and pink, which was all the rage in the 50s. My strongest memory is of eating breakfast and listening to my mother’s favorite radio show, Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club, which originated in Chicago, where both my parents were born and raised.”

I actually grew up in three different places. Panorama City from a year and a half old until I was seven. Then Palms (West L.A.) for a year, then North Hollywood on the border of Sun Valley until I left home. Although I frequently noted my disappointment my family issues couldn’t be resolved in a half hour like Donna Reed’s did, I really had a great childhood, all things considered. I consider myself luck; some may say privileged … and they’d get no argument from me. Hardly wealthy, yet reasonably comfortable.