The Kids are All Right: A Memoir by Diana and Liz Welch with Dan and Amanda Welch

It was a dilemma–should we include an afterword? Fast forward ten years to let readers know just how “all right” we were? Diana and I tried several versions, and truth be told, we loved each of them! We sent our favorite, cut and pasted below, to our our editor Julia Pastore who also wavered. “Diana’s last line is sooo good,” she said. “Such a perfect place to end.” We agreed. As Diana pointed out, “We can always publish it on our website!”

And so, in response to the dozens of emails and questions at readings from fans and curious folks who simply want to know, “What happened next?”… here is the afterword that almost was:

It was really annoying when Party of Five came out, because that show totally stole our idea. For the five years that Diana lived with Amanda and Dennis until she went to college, we all pitched in and raised each other. Dan and Diana were the kids, Liz and Amanda tag teamed as the de-facto mom and dad, disciplining their younger siblings as best they could. There were bumps along the way: When Dan nearly failed out of Rochester Institute of Technology, Liz and Amanda conference called him and told him not to waste the trust fund’s money. The next semester, he got a B average, but got kicked out anyway. Something to do with a fire extinguisher. Raising Diana was not easy, either. Amanda’s rules were not outrageous—like, smoke pot after you finish your homework, not before–but Diana’s stubborn nature matched her elder sister’s. “Get good grades and you can get away with anything” resulted in Diana continuing to only do the homework that interested her, and “No body piercings or tattoos” resulted in a nose ring and an indigo image of Saturn permanently inked on Diana’s arm.

When Diana was about to graduate from Tandem, the hippie high school in Charlottesville that she transferred to from St. Anne’s-Belfield her junior year, Amanda wanted to do something special. She called Liz, who was living in Manhattan, working as an editorial assistant at Vanity Fair magazine. “I think we should make a book,” Amanda said. “I think we should reach out to people who knew Mom and Dad, and ask them to contribute stories.”

Amanda and Dennis had gotten married the year before, in September of 1995, so Amanda already had names and addresses of our favorite aunts and uncles. Dan, who lived in Manhattan near Liz, and was working as a camera assistant at a commercial production house, had walked a proud Auntie Eve down the aisle followed by Uncle Russ who beamed as brightly as Amanda that day; Liz and Diana were her bridesmaids. The wedding party was held at the house Amanda and Dennis built, using the plans from Mom’s new house, on sixty-acres they had purchased in rural Virginia.

Liz wrote the letter and sent it out to everyone on the wedding list, and old colleagues and friends of Mom and Dad’s, too. The responses poured in. Aunt Barbara wrote a six-page letter, filled with stories of our Dad when he was young, like the time his pants fell down in the middle of a high school football game. “Holding them up with one hand, the ball in the other, he made the touch down and won the game! What a guy! Our hero!” she wrote. She sent newspaper clippings and his class photo from Johns Hopkins and we all marveled at how much Dan looks like Dad, his carbon copy. Barbara ended her letter, the first we received, with this: “What stands out most in my mind is Bob’s fiftieth birthday party. He was so happy and he held his little girl in his arms, and said, ‘She is my pride and joy.’ That is you Diana.”

Uncle Buzz sent a long letter about growing up in Middlebury, Vermont, on the U.S. Morgan Horse Farm where our grandfather was a supervisor, and how Mom had recreated that pastoral childhood in Bedford, at Twin Meadows. He sent photos of Mom as a young girl in pigtails. Janie Rayne wrote about visiting Twin Meadows years later, and how she thought, “Annie was the perfect mum, seeming to manage so easily the house, her children and her career, and always with laughter and that dimpled smile.” And that when, years later, Mom told Janie she was ill, she never complained or felt sorry for herself. “All of you have the essence of both Annie and Bob—courage, warmth, humor, intelligence and joy. Mom and Dad would be so very proud of you all.”

As Liz amassed all the letters, Amanda went through all of Mom’s old files and found the soap magazine articles, and the theater reviews, which she and Liz cut and pasted onto large sheets of paper. John Cunningham, who played Mom’s husband on Loving, the one she shot for molesting their daughter, wrote, “Your mom was certainly one of the most beautiful of many beautiful people I have known and worked with in the theater … She was gracious, caring, fun-loving, and the finest possible example of manners at their best. In a profession that fosters ego and self-concern, she was genuinely concerned about others. And what courage she demonstrated in the final years. As only a few ever successfully do, she showed us how to live.”

Then Amanda, Liz and Dan added their own memories. Amanda wrote about the only fight she ever witnessed our parents have—over Liz’s nickname. “One night, Dad said, ‘I’m going to eat your beets, Lizzie Ritz.’ And then Mom said, ‘It’s Lizzie Bits, Bob.’ They argued back and forth, and it was never resolved. They were stubborn. Anyway, it’s Whiz.” Talk about stubborn; Whiz was the nickname Amanda gave Liz in college.

Liz included her college essay, and the five-page letter and two poems Diana sent her in Edinburgh. She also wrote a four-page letter, which ends, “Amanda once confided to me that if she had the chance to go back and change her past, she would not change anything. Our parents’ deaths, and more importantly their lives, have made us who we are. Dad and Mom are not gone. They live in each one of us.”

Dan talked about family vacations, little league and soccer, and how he never wanted to disappoint Dad. And then he talked about Mom. He said, “Mom loved us so much, it was almost too much. You could get away with anything with Mom. I took advantage of that, and of her sickness. She trusted me when I was lying and didn’t punish me when I was caught. I love her and respect her now more than ever before. She was truly a kind and loving individual, and she totally outsmarted me! I can’t lie anymore; I can’t cheat or steal because I feel guilty for having done it to her. God, she was good. Mom always told me I could do anything I wanted. And I still believe her. You can too, Diana. I love you.”

Amanda, Liz and Dan presented the giant yellow book, which they had titled “The Evolution of the Love Child,” to Diana on her graduation day. As the eighteen-year-old, now taller than both her big sisters with a wild mane of red hair that reached mid-way down her back, flipped through it, she fought back tears. She still hated crying in front of people. But it was impossible not to. For years, she had been asked, “Who do you think you are?” Back then, she hadn’t known the answer. But now, surrounded by these people who loved her so fiercely, she knew. She is the daughter of Ann Morgan Williams Welch and Robert Daniel Peter Welch. She is sister to Amanda Gordon, Liz Morgan, and Daniel Merryman. She is a Welch.

That was our first pick! We’ll publish our second in a few days and let our readers decide which they like best… if any at all! If none, we are open to suggestions! We’ll host an “afterword off” to see which Welch comes up with the best ending, if such a thing is possible