I, too, dreamed the fifties dream
I believed in Dr. Stone and Donna
And the Cleavers and the Nelsons
And I thought that if your husband died
In no time you became the Brady Bunch
And so the sixties passed me by
Civil rights and peace belonged
To Kennedy and King- and other dead men.

And my dream remained alive
Though even Ricky Nelson died
And in the seventies I married 
And formed a fifties family
(Two parents and two children
And dinner all together in the kitchen
Every night at six)

And I continued with pretending
Through the issues of the eighties
Even as I giggled while the Real Live
Mike Brady died of AIDS...
And I scoffed at Murphy Brown-
Until my husband bought a gun
And drove into the mountains
And killed my fifties dream.