The Confessions Of de Vries: Happy 40th Anniversary To Our Favorite Couple!!

In addition to being the birthday of my second favorite movie star, Joan Crawford, March 23rd is also the wedding anniversary of two of my favorite people: my Mom and Dad. There would never have been a "Vogue Boy" video without Madonna, but I would never have been a Vogue Boy without my parents. They protected me from the very concept of intolerance throughout my childhood, and they were offscreen cheering me on while I danced. It is certainly not the only reason I am forever grateful to them. But I think this aspect of that happy moment in my childhood speaks to why I regard them as being my friends as well as my parents.

My parents are remarkably unpretentious people who instilled in me a habit (if not a superstition) of maintaining a veil of modesty between "public" and "personal". As such, I weighed whether or not to post a collection of favorite photos as I had previously done for my mother’s birthday and the anniversary of my cat Toby walking into my life. But I decided I would share a handful of treasured images, and for two reasons. First and foremost, my sister Jennifer gave us all a gift when she scanned hundreds of family photos back in 2008 for their digital preservation. This presentation is a gift we give to our parents together, for it would never have been possible had she not spent weeks finding and saving a lifetime's worth of priceless treasures. Second, my parents have been through a great deal of hardship in recent years. Like so many people around the world right now, financial struggles have tested their other relationships. When you lose a great deal of money, you find that many friends and family members suddenly stop caring. (We do, after all, live in a “what’s in it for me?” society.) You also gain a new appreciation for those loved ones who reveal that their love and compassion is in no way connected to money or materialism, a revelation that makes you love those loved ones more than you ever thought possible. It is through these eyes of love that I present these photographs, scanned by my sister and taken by many such loved ones over the course of my parents’ forty year marriage. As much as anything else, my parents have taught me that friendship is at the root of all great relationships, and most especially lifelong romance. My sister and I are more blessed than words can ever describe to be the children of our father and mother. And nothing makes us happier than knowing that, “in good times and in bad”, they always have had and always will have one another.