Tanya visits Dora, January 2011

This post is written by Fisher Picture guest blogger, Dora.

The Fishers have a large, close extended family. I feel so lucky to know and be close with so many of us- Fishers, Cohens, Weinbergers, Fong-Cohens, Luxenburgs, now even some Amiras (venturing into 3rd cousin territory)!

This weekend, second cousin Tanya came to visit me in Chicago. Many of my friends say to me, "what does it mean to be second cousins?". So let this post explain how we are related.

We share great grandparents, Mollie and Isaac Cohen.



Our grandmothers are sisters, Rae Luxenburg and Sue Fisher, both pictured here on the left in this whimsical picture (on the right is Marci, Tanya's aunt and my dad's first cousin)

Our fathers are first cousins, Josh and Verne.

Verne with his aunt, my grandmother, Sue, in 1996.



I'm pictured here with Tanya's grandmother, my great aunt Rae, at my grandparents 50th anniversary 15 years ago:



Tanya, with her mother Susie and grandmother Rae (my great aunt), as a baby:



All this makes us second cousins!

Photo taken 5 minutes ago at a cafe in Chicago:



So fun to have you here, Tanya, and may our families continue to be close for generations to come.

Fishers and Cohens (almost certainly Bronx, NY, about 1950)

This is my favorite of all the family pictures, having all four of my grandparents, and almost all their children, in one photo. I don't know where this was--Betty and I noodled over it, and eliminated all the likely places, but I'm sure it was someone in our family's apartment. I don't know the event either, but given how everyone is dressed, it could well have been a Passover celebration. In any case, in this photo are:
[Back row] Annie, Sam
[3rd row] Jerry, Betty, Mollie, Isaac, Sue
[2nd row] Rae, Paul, Rose, Sol
[Front row] Josh, Willa

Missing are Bud and Harry Cohen, plus my father (who undoubtedly took the picture). As always, click on the picture for a much larger version.

Christmas at Jessica and Gordon's (NY, NY, Dec 1979)

We visited Jessica and Gordon in their apartment in Murray Hill.


My parents came with us.



Note the little upright piano (it was a Baldwin Spinet), before Gordon and Jessica gave it to us.





I guess this is when I scored the blue bathrobe I'm seen in elsewhere in this blog.

Christmas 1982 - Part 2 of 3 (Darien, CT, Dec 1982)

Christmas Dinner:





And the after-party (or maybe the before-party):

Christmas 1979 - Part 2 of 2 (Darien, CT, Dec 1979)

I'm just deducing from Davey's age and haircut that this first picture is Christmas 1979. Both our kids were a little leery of this Santa thing when he was in the flesh. And they hadn't even seen Bad Santa.



This has to be Dan. He would have been a little over 3 months old at Christmas, 1979, and that's when this tree is from.

Christmas 1978 - Part 3 of 3 (Teaneck, NJ, Dec 1978)

Note the similarity of the first picture to the baking picture from Christmas 1976. Different haircut, though. And a different TV.

Turkey before...

...turkey after. Paul, with his surgical experience, usually got saddled with the carving, which he was way better at than anyone else.

One more shot of the loot.




I posted this picture before (on Mother's Day), but this is where it came from. See that front door? You can see that there's a storm door with a glass panel behind it. Once, carrying Davey in the car seat in front of me on our way to the car, I walked right into that panel as if it weren't there, shattering glass violently in all directions. Good thing he was in a car seat. (Yes, some of us used car seats even then.)

Christmas 1978 - Part 2 of 3 (Teaneck, NJ, Dec 1978)

More photos from the Christmas of 1978.



Earlier, I blogged the four generations of Fisher boys. If you click on the photo, and look carefully at the background, you can see that this is three of us.

Thanksgiving 1997 (West Henrietta, NY, Nov 1997)

Elizabeth, Dora and I visited my parents in Rochester for Thanksgiving, 1997, a year before my mother died. This was the last time I can remember her being herself, she sank pretty fast after that.