Life With Father

Town & Country
By Jamie Bernstein
December 21, 2023

Leonard Bernstein's daughter, Jamie, reflects on their relationship, from the August 2008 issue of Town & Country.

When we were little and shared a room, my brother, Alexander, and I used to drift off to sleep at right angles to each other, listening to the steady waves of laughter, piano playing and singing emanating from our parents and all their witty, noisy friends downstairs. This is what grown-ups did: they drank and smoked and interrupted one another and played raucous word games and sang at the top of their lungs and laughed until they choked. We couldn’t wait to be grown-ups.