Tight Genes

   It’s funny how events collide, synchronicity at its best.

   My friend Lisa is reading a book about Caroline Kennedy by Christopher Anderson called Sweet Caroline (2003), probably the only bio on her to be had, and a wonderful one at that.

It so happens, Jackie and Jack’s eldest doesn’t live far from me, so after asking Lisa how’s the book, who do I see? The truth is, if you weren’t as observant as I am, you’d never realize it’s her since, she’s pretty nondescript in the sense that, she’s not glamorous, lacking her mother’s innate elegance  one can’t ignore.

   She’s all Kennedy in looks, as if her mom was Ethel or Eunice rather than Jacqueline. However, she has her mother’s noble gait…shoulders back, an ability to walk with blinders on in case she is recognized.

  Now take her brother who looked so much like the Bouvier side of the family…dark, sultry, very much like his grandfather, Black Jack Bouvier, yet had the swagger and charm of his own father. 

     John Jr. was a Kennedy right down to his socks the way he wore the family mantle he seemed to bask in, especially the way he’d handle the press that was always lurking.

   He had noblesse oblige built in…

a responsibility of privileged people to act with generosity and nobility toward those less privileged.

   Sounds haughty, but that’s the definition, and he had it, unlike his mother who did everything to avoid being a headline.

   I’ll always remember the late Pete Hamill’s description of Jackie Kennedy when he dated her…

‘it was like taking King Kong to the beach,’ the attention she drew, same as her son. 

   As for her esteemed daughter, sweet Caroline, the simplicity in her serves her well.

  Must be nice to go get a newspaper without being trailed.

   Rosedale Fish Market on Lexington Avenue and 78th Street that stood for 98 years, closing in 2004, had a huge print of this in their window one could call, Kennedy fans with sole. 

SB