Talking Old Photos

I'm clearing out a lot of stuff from my universe.  It's been toss it time for ages and I'm now just getting to a fever pitch.  I'm trying to quit carrying around treasures from my life everywhere I go.  Instead, I'm ditching anything that hasn't been touched in six months or more.

It's all just crap anyway.  All of our treasures.  I remember when Robert Rivera died.  I went over to his place with his family to sort through the stuff and deal with it.  Bob came with me.  At the end of the day, there were close to a dozen large trash bags of his things sitting by the curb, waiting for the trash truck or the homeless to descend.  These bags were filled with all of his treasures, the things he cherished and held dear.  They meant nothing to anyone else, not even to his family or to me. 

The day I die I'm sure the story will be the same:  all of this precious crap I've been hauling around for years will get tossed, deemed of little value to those who come after me.  Most of these things are in my storage unit.  Things like:  examples of the work I did for many years, cancelled checks and tax informaiton from 15 years ago, an old desk that I broke 4 years ago.  And pictures.  Pictures, pictures, pictures.  Thousands of pictures, most bad. 

I've started sorting through them and scanning the ones I care about so that I'll have an electronic copy, and trashing the rest.  It's been  an interesting exercise.  Every time I look at old photos it becomes an interesting exercise.  But yesterday I came across a pack of old photos of my father and his family.  I was stunned.  Here was my dad as a rakish young lad, mugging for the camera in his sisters hat.  Here he was with his sisters and parents, not a smile in the group. 

Every time I think I know this guy, I come across something that makes me wonder all over again.  Was he always a frightened little man?  Or was that something he learned over time?  Did he once have the ability to laugh and smile and clown?  I never saw it.  And who were his parents?  What lessons did they teach him? 

Here's my dad with his sisters and mother.  What I'm immediately struck with is the pinched look of most of the eyes in the photo.  Dad and his older sister Edna seem to be thinking, 'Is this ok?  Am I ok?' and his mom just looks like she doesn't want to be there at all.  The younger sister looks most natural to me.  As I understand it , Gramma was not very involved with her family.  She pretty much left the younger children  for the older daughter, Edna, to raise.  She became severe and austere very early on. 

I remember my Gramma is a non-entity.  There was nothing there to hold on to.  I remember no joy.  I do remember anger a time or two.  But mostly what I remember is vaccuousness . . . . blank. . . . empty . . . nothing. 

In the next photo, everyones a year or two older and there's a new baby sister.  Edna has assumed her role as surrogate mother to the others . . . and, once again. look in the eyes.  Is that defeat I see mixed in there with the fear? 

Here, we fast forward ten years or so.  My dad must have been in his rebellious phase . . . can you see the 'go to hell' there in his eyes?  Edna' smiling (sorta), the proud mom.  And Marion, the middle girl, just over my dad's left sholder, is showing her true nature.  And what was that, you ask.  She was slippery, devious and conniving.   

A few years later, dad and Edna lived together in Washington DC.  Dad had gotten a job with the government and Edna had, too, I think.  They were on their own for the first time.  Look how Edna's filled out!  I remember her as always being awkward . . . a little like Olive Oil in appearance; but I always really liked her.  There was something very childlike about her . . . open.  Dad looks great, doesn't he?  Not at all unlike what he looked like later in live, except that he had more hair here. 

Here they are again, still in D.C. but a year or so later.  I say that because my dad has on different clothes and the beginnings of a moustache.  Although Edna's hat is the same, she's in a new outfit, too.  Dad looks taller and older here . . . more settled.  Notice how he's holding the cigarette.  Was he the dandy about town?   

And here' s my favorite of the bunch.  It's my dad camping it up before the camera in Edna's hat.  This would have been in the 30's or early 40s.  I think that's probably the most genuine smile I've ever seen on my dad's face, the big old queen.  Maybe his feminime side needed more expression. 

This is  the woman who stole my father's heart, my mom.  She had escaped from dirt poor rural existance in the hills of West Virginia to work for her state senator in D.C. and there met my dad.  I think she was a beautiful woman . . . but I believe her country background hobbled her.  In later years she would become irate whenever mention of where she came from was made.  She was very sensitive about being a hillbilly. 

My dad went into the war shortly after this picture was shot and my mom went on to have a huge affair with a married man.  Her plan was that they would both leave their spouses to be together and she'd gone so far as to write my dad in Eurpoe and tell him.  But the other guy wouldn't leave his wife.  He'd been pulling her along as men sometimes do. 

My dad would never talk about the war.  I don't know what he did and only a little about where he was.  I think it was an awful time for him and I think my mom was the reason.  I can't imagine anything worse than getting that kind of news when you're 3,000 miles away and utterly unable to react.  When he came home in 1945, he held her at bay for several years.  Finally, though he took her back and quickly my brother was born and a year later, me.  They fought bitterly for the next seven years or so.  My brother used to run away from home at least once a week because he couldn't take the screaming. 

Me?  I barely remember it.  I spent those years in my own perfect world, drawing, and making up games and playing quietly by myself in  the corner.  It's what I'm still doing today.