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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