Tag: legacy writing

I love this photo of Uncle John and Aunt Fran so much it makes me want to time travel just so I can hug them. Everything about it makes me smile: her big hair and earrings, both of them wearing diamond rings, their matching outfits, holding their sunglasses (and he, his cigarettes and lighter), standing next to their big Caddy. The photo screams Texas, but they weren’t Texans. They were Southern through and through–which meant they were both fantastic storytellers: she tended toward the dramatic, he toward the understated, but all of their anecdotes would make me laugh until I cried.

One way or another, I’m determined that these two will end up in one of my stories one day. Even though they’ll be fictionalized, if you recognize them, you’ll know every word was written with affection.

My mother: just a generation or two or three–who’s counting–from putting her youngest on Toddlers and Tiaras.

This is actually probably one of those photos she took to send to my father when he was in Korea. Mostly, I’m sharing it because I know some of you would love to have that retro table now.

In the stacks of photos that belonged to my mother, there are many of people and places that I can’t identify. Even sometimes when I have names, I’m not sure which of her siblings’ families they belonged to. For example, a couple of my uncles were married multiple times and had children with their different wives. I only remember the wives they had when I knew them, and her genealogy records are sometimes lacking in those details. Some photos will always remain a mystery, so when I look at them, I make up my own stories. And really, memory is such a tricky thing, and family reminiscences are often filtered through so many sources, that what I come up may be just as valid.

Stories We Tell Ourselves — One.

This man is likely a nephew of my mother’s. But since I don’t know that, and since he’s handsome, I’ve decided he’s the man she loved before she met my father. There actually was such a man. He was Catholic, and because they wanted to be married, she began the process of becoming Catholic. For some reason, they broke up. I have a vague sense that his family didn’t approve of her. He broke her heart. She stopped her steps toward becoming Catholic.

It might have been after their breakup that she took a trip alone to San Francisco. When she came back to the South, she met my father. Their first date was to a dance, but they ducked outside and talked. She told us they talked for hours about books and art. Many of his first gifts to her during their courtship were books. Later, the other boyfriend–I seem to recall that his name was Johnny–wanted her back, but it was too late. She was in love with my father. I’m glad it worked out that way!

One reason I’ve decided to let this photo be “Johnny” is because something connected to him remained with her through the decades. After my father died, she finally became Catholic. That brought many friends, a way to help others, and a lot of comfort to her in the last fifteen years of her life.

Stories We Tell Ourselves — Two.

This photo is so scratched and faded that if there’s a family member in it, I can’t possibly identify which one, even if it’s one of my parents and not one of their siblings. If I make it really huge, some of the kids are smiling, but some of them break my heart because they make me think of the grinding poverty of the South when my parents were growing up. Faces of children shouldn’t be so worn, so joyless. Maybe part of the problem is that they were told to be completely still for the photographer, but all I see in the sadness is the root of why my mother thought FDR saved the South. He turned her into a lifelong liberal and champion of any marginalized group who deserved a shot at a better, fairer life. In our house, we did not all always agree on politics. But I would say that our politics are based on social justice more than any other concern.

Stories We Tell Ourselves — Three.

The stories of my parents’ meeting have gotten muddled over the years. I spoke above of their first date, but that wasn’t their first meeting. Legend has it that he saw a girl walking down the street and was smitten by her confident stride, her beauty, and the bounce of her shiny brown hair. When he asked who she was, he learned she was the sister of someone he already knew. He asked for an introduction, and when he got it, he asked for a date, and she said yes.

In this photo, Daddy’s sitting on a front porch with her brother John and a baby who’s not any of us. So I imagine that after she began dating him, my mother took my father around to meet various family members, and this photo was taken on one of those visits. The photo is so dark that it’s hard to see the two men. John looks tired–with a toddler in the house, that wouldn’t be surprising. And my father looks like a man who’s been aged by war. Sometimes I wonder how she looked past the gaunt cheeks, the hollow eyes, the too-slender frame and saw the fine quality of the man within.

And then–I remember the character of both of them that I knew so well, and I don’t wonder at all.

Boots, Mother, Flora, John, Verble, Lamar, and Grover

Remember my mother was the youngest of twelve, and she’s in her fifties here, so these siblings who were able to attend her family reunion are all older than her. I don’t think it had been very long since Grover had his leg amputated. I don’t remember why it was amputated, but someone called my mother and told her the details, and I know she was really worried about him. She kept checking in to find out how things were going, and was relieved when he was finally able to go home. Then she got the rest of the story.

Apparently after Grover was driven home from the hospital, he insisted that whoever was helping him leave–maybe to run errands, pick up groceries. I don’t know. It was his first time to be alone with only one leg, and he was in a wheelchair. When his helper returned to the house, Grover was on the floor–running the vacuum cleaner.

My mother knew then that he’d be fine. I come from strong people–and they like a clean house.

During the last part of my senior year in high school, Cousin Bruce and his wife April lived with us. They’d been living in post housing, but then they both were discharged honorably and maybe they were waiting for one’s job contract in the civilian sector to end before they moved out of our area–it’s been too long for me to remember the details, but it doesn’t matter. It was a blast to have them living with us. Bruce is Uncle Gerald’s son (he has an older sister and a younger brother), the relatives on my mother’s side we were closest to while I was growing up. He’s a favorite of mine, and his wife April is a somewhat subtle but definite hoot to be around.

They had my bedroom while they were with us, and because my mother had turned the third bedroom of our house into a den, I opted to sleep on the couch in the living room–the least-used room in the house except when my parents were entertaining. So we were essentially in my “bedroom” when we took these photos one night shortly before I graduated. In the second photo below, I’ve just opened the Kodak camera kit Bruce and April gave me for graduation and as a thank-you for giving up my room to them. Everyone who’s ever been tormented by my passion for shooting photos–THESE are the two people you have to thank for starting my obsession.

You can tell by the crappy quality of this photo, taken with my mother’s camera set on the table, that somebody in that house needed a decent camera. I’ve taken as much of the yellow out of it as I can. That’s April between me and Mother, and behind us is Bruce–who’s really not wearing a lei but sitting behind a flower arrangement on the coffee table. You can also see the top of The Boyfriend’s head. I don’t know where Daddy was. At the end of the school year, I suspect he was at work.

Here I am holding my new camera. What I like about this photo is that in the corner, I can spot the five-piece, hot pink luggage set that was my graduation gift from my parents. THEY WANTED ME TO LEAVE!

Graduation Day

Some mornings when my father got up, he’d come to the living room, wake me up, and send me to get another hour or so of sleep in his bed while the kitchen got noisy (the living room couch where I was sleeping looked directly through the dining room into the kitchen, with no door to close in between. So this was a true gesture of kindness toward a teenager who wanted to sleep in). In this shot, my mother is waking me up in his bed. Don’t I look THRILLED?

I’m actually managing to smile as I advance to the breakfast phase. Only I didn’t want breakfast. I’m pouring milk. Only I don’t like milk. That’s why the Nestlé Quik chocolate mix is on the counter. What I love about this photo: They still had an electric percolator for coffee–those were the days before Mr. Coffee moved in. Also, that tiny iron skillet hanging on the cabinet for a decoration is really an ashtray. And I still have it.

I have now become fully awake and aware of the fact that this lunatic is shooting photos of me and I’M NOT WEARING MAKEUP. Go away! And that hairbrush in front of me…I still have it. That makes it older than–what I mean to say is, “I’m thirty-five!” I don’t use the brush anymore; it’s with the dog stuff because I use it on Guinness and any longer-haired dogs we foster.

Yeah, boy, these days are over. Not only is no one going to photograph me in a swimming suit and live to tell, but I don’t lie in the sun. I don’t read in the sun. And I’m sure all grass is chigger-laden. Oh, careless youth!

Excuse me! My nose is red from the sun, I’m STILL not wearing makeup, I’m dressed in an old shirt of my father’s, and I’m rolling my hair on a washcloth. Be gone!

The crazy woman’s napkin is on her plate because she’s STILL taking pictures and won’t sit down. My last dinner as a high school student, and it’s meat loaf. Blech. But I do love mashed potatoes and lima beans. I see a bowl of lemons on the table because we’re all addicted to iced tea. The saucer of white bread cracks me up. My father thought there always had to be bread on the table, so if there were no biscuits, no cornbread, no rolls, no garlic bread, then bring out the white bread. Also notable: everyone’s cigarettes and lighters on the counter behind me. I didn’t smoke, but we were talking the other night about how both my high schools had smoking areas for students who smoked. Times have changed, huh?

The boyfriend has arrived and is helping me remove scuff marks from my white patent-leather sandals. As I look at this photo, I’m trying not to fixate on that ashtray on the end table that’s ridiculously familiar to me after all these years. (No, I don’t still have that one.) Do not even ask me why white shoes were mandated for our graduation ceremony. Blame it on the times. I’m planning to wear those white shorts beneath my robe, but I’ve still got on pantyhose! Again, times have changed.

I include this one of me and the boyfriend not to mock his white belt, but because it’s one of the few photos I have of his orange bug. That VW took us to college–and back and forth for many weekends. I wish I had it now. I’m sure it’s still running. I’m holding my new camera!

Marching in. If I look like I’m about to cry, it’s because I’m about to cry.

That’s our principal handing me my diploma. But it’s my father who’s read my name from behind the podium. If he looks like he’s about to cry… Actually, I think he and Mr. B discussed switching places for that moment, but he was afraid it would make me cry.

Now a graduate, I’m walking out. And biting my lip to keep from laughing. I think I broke myself of that habit–someone else would have to say, because if I still do it, I’m not aware of it.