51 Birch Street plot
"Do you really want to know your parents?"
How well do we know our parents? Do we know their deepest secrets and do we really want to know them if we get the opportunity? Cinematographer Doug Block had no reason to doubt the marital bliss of his parents, who had been married for 54 years. He is therefore shocked when his father Mike announces a few months after his wife's death that he is moving from New York to Florida to marry Kitty, the woman who was his secretary 40 years ago. Doug doesn't understand. He returns to his childhood home on Long Island to find three boxes containing his mother's diaries from the past 35 years. On the basis of the surprising revelations in those diaries, interviews with relatives, old photos and home movies, he tries to reconstruct the secret life of his parents. He discovers that his parents hid a lot from their children, and that they were much more complex and troubled people than he could ever have imagined.