The Pee Fairy and Other Family Legends

Last night I found myself in Studio City, raising a glass to my cousin Pete, who has officially turned 75. His older brother Glenn, still sharp at 77, had flown in from Mercer Island, and the two of them instantly pulled me into a time warp. Suddenly I was no longer a 63-year-old man at a birthday party but a wide-eyed kid again, spending summers with them in the late ’60s on Maryland Street.

They lived in a Spanish-style home built in the 1920s, the kind of place that looked like it was made for nostalgia: clay tiles, creaky wood floors, and a kitchen that always smelled of coffee, bagels and pumpernickel browning in the toaster. Pete’s Dodgers photos hung in the den, alongside a bobblehead that seemed drunk even before the games started.

The backyard was Eden in miniature—orange, lemon, and tangerine trees glowed in the California sun, and we’d pedal our bikes past rose-drenched houses while Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” warbled from my transistor radio. Old ladies waved as if we were celebrities, which of course we believed we were.

Then came my most infamous contribution to family lore: at six years old, I wet the bed and, unwilling to admit it, blamed the “Pee Fairy.” Pete, Glenn, and their parents—Gladys and Gene—laughed as though I’d landed a Vegas comedy set. Gladys, saintly and unflappable, washed the sheets and hung them out beneath lemon-scented sunshine. That was love, the real thing, not nostalgia’s gauzy counterfeit.

And last night, as Pete blew out his candles, that same love filled the room—messy, enduring, funny, and fierce. I left grateful to have been part of it, both then and now.