Karen & Olivia: Another Place and Time

A small boy in an Italian film, projected-age marriage calculus, and a scorched wooden bridge (repost)

(This is a repost from last fall when I had two subscribers, and they both had the same last name.)

When I was seven years old things got so musically out of hand, I was forbidden to play the Carpenters when other family members were present in the home.

“The Singles 1969-1973” was my first record. It had an all-brown cover with an embossed logo that I ran my fingers over. There was an air-brushed picture of Karen Carpenter where her hair was so powerfully backlit she approached a solar eclipse.

On an inside lyrics pullout there were, alas, only two pictures. I enjoyed them in endless alternation. One was a picture of her in a car with her brother and another one taken on an arched wooden bridge. It was in a garden. She smiled softly, demurely at someone.

Perhaps me.

It was my first album, and I was on top of the world. I loved that album completely, utterly, purely. I played it endlessly, in a looping continuum that would humble the most diligent iPod. Endless days of “They Long to Be (…