The Family Endures
How lucky I am to love, and be loved by, this amazing cast of characters I call family.
Amanda lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband, Matt, and her son, Zachary. She is a woman of rare sensitivity and compassion who has devoted her career to helping children in crisis.
David is a DJ living in Los Angeles with his wife, Jen. He spins records around the world, regularly mixing the retro sounds we grew up to with twenty-first century beats. He has little memory of the events that occur in this book, but he does remember Bunny Yabba fondly.
My father and Danielle married in 1984. They took me in when things were at their worst, helped me finish high school, and taught me, by example, the skills I would need to have a career of impact and meaning. They also gave me two beautiful sisters, Antonia and Dirrane, and cofounded a welfare-to-work company together which they continue to run. In 2009 they were featured in a Discovery Channel series called The Science of Sex Appeal in which their longstanding relationship was put to hormonal and neurological tests. They passed.
My mother nearly died in 1993 from a sudden liver infection. Her then-boyfriend Rich, a loving and curmudgeonly anti-Papa, stayed faithfully by her side through the transplant and recovery and they were married in 1996. She recently took on a consulting assignment to develop banking software. The woman who wielded a sledgehammer with grace has smashed more than her share of walls post–Chestnut Street.
Carly continues to help others as a therapist in California, providing support to adolescent women and their families, couples seeking help with sexual issues or the psychological aspects of infertility, and people struggling with health care providers. Her ability to express and inspire joy is an enduring gift to this world.
Howie retired from porn in the mid-’80s when HIV/AIDS swept in, after appearing in more than a hundred X-rated films and videos. He won the porn industry’s equivalent of an Oscar at the first ever AVN awards in 1984, taking home not one but two trophies for best actor and best supporting actor in the same year. He still keeps journals and, in 2013, published Hindsight: True Love & Mischief in the Golden Age of Porn, a memoir about his storied career. His iconoclasm, artistry, and honesty continue to influence my understanding of what it means to be a good human being, and a good man.
Howie and Carly are still married. They have three kids and two grandkids. Aside from Uncle Rick and Aunt Leslie, they are the only couple we know to have survived the Great Divorce Wave of the 1980s. If you’re a romantic, you may think it’s some kind of miracle. If you’re a cynic, a case of make-believe. But it’s just them: honest and in love.
I met and fell in love with my wife, Dana, on a cold November night in a Northampton ice cream shop in 1993. She was one week from moving out of town and I don’t like ice cream. But certain things are meant to be. Dana’s direct and honest way was instantly familiar, and an instant relief. We married in 1998 and Sam and Sylvie joined us shortly thereafter.
Howie and Carly returned to New England for a visit last autumn. They only stayed for a few days this time around, and it wasn’t nearly enough. A little older and slower than in 1978, they are no less capable of inspiring delight and imagination in every generation of the Cove family.