I was digging around in a closet full of cardboard boxes when I discovered a box full of old family photos. Some were so ancient as to be brittle, the paper flaking apart in my fingers, the sepiatoned faces staring at me in disbelief, as if not comprehending what was happening to them. Great-great-grandparents and fourth cousins twice removed, forgotten ancestors and scenes of Christmases long ago all lay jumbled together in a mass of folded, crinkled photo paper, filling several ancient leatherette photo albums.
I picked up several of the photos, searching through them for a family connection, looking for the familiar. There was one of my grandparents, younger than I had ever known them. There was a small group of children -- their relationship has been lost to the ages -- smiling and waving at the camera, apparently preparing to watch a parade. Was it the 4th of July? Veteran’s Day? I’ll probably never know. One of them might be my mom, my dad, an aunt or uncle. I can’t tell. They are all perhaps six, seven, eight years old.
Then I find some familiar faces. It’s my mother and father, seated next to each other on the sofa in the house I grew up in, so long ago. It’s the late 1960s. The picture is in color, a faded Kodachrome print.
The photograph is also an out-and-out lie.
Mommy and Daddy are smiling -- no, grinning. Grinning from ear to ear, as if they had won the lottery, which of course they never did, at least so far as I know. Their eyes shine; perhaps it was New Year’s Eve, and they had had a few drinks, I don’t know for sure. I don’t think so, because they were usually out on New Year’s Eve, out with friends, out celebrating. What I do know is that I recognize the sofa -- a hideous French provincial thing of the style that my mother fell in love with circa 1966. Our living room in those days had two of them; the one visible in the photo was a pale gold color with a brighter gold embroidery; the other was a two-tone blue. The marble-topped tables and the twenty-five inch Magnavox console color television were all carved with the little decorative feet that characterizes that same style. A print of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy hung on the wall, next to its ubiquitous companion, the lady in pink; my mother’s idea of culture.
And so on some evening in the late 60s -- the processing date on the edge of the photo says it was developed in June 1968 -- my parents seemed to be having a good time. But this, along with the photo, is also a lie.
You see, I remember the late 1960s. I would have been nine years old in June of 1968, certainly old enough to have vivid memories of what our life was like in those days, and all I can remember is their nightly fighting, the yelling and the screaming. Nearly every night, I remember crying myself to sleep. I remember a hundred times or more going into their bedroom and trying to broker a fragile peace between them, as if they were Israel and the Arabs, but to no avail.
I remember my father sitting there with a steak knife by his side, never brandishing it in a threatening way, but always making sure it was evident that it was there. I never understood how he could do that to my mother. I swore that I would never threaten a woman with a weapon. I swore that I’d be more of a man than my father was.
And yet now, looking at the smiles on their faces, it almost seems as though those memories aren’t real, but I know they are.
You see, old photographs always lie.
I picked up several of the photos, searching through them for a family connection, looking for the familiar. There was one of my grandparents, younger than I had ever known them. There was a small group of children -- their relationship has been lost to the ages -- smiling and waving at the camera, apparently preparing to watch a parade. Was it the 4th of July? Veteran’s Day? I’ll probably never know. One of them might be my mom, my dad, an aunt or uncle. I can’t tell. They are all perhaps six, seven, eight years old.
Then I find some familiar faces. It’s my mother and father, seated next to each other on the sofa in the house I grew up in, so long ago. It’s the late 1960s. The picture is in color, a faded Kodachrome print.
The photograph is also an out-and-out lie.
Mommy and Daddy are smiling -- no, grinning. Grinning from ear to ear, as if they had won the lottery, which of course they never did, at least so far as I know. Their eyes shine; perhaps it was New Year’s Eve, and they had had a few drinks, I don’t know for sure. I don’t think so, because they were usually out on New Year’s Eve, out with friends, out celebrating. What I do know is that I recognize the sofa -- a hideous French provincial thing of the style that my mother fell in love with circa 1966. Our living room in those days had two of them; the one visible in the photo was a pale gold color with a brighter gold embroidery; the other was a two-tone blue. The marble-topped tables and the twenty-five inch Magnavox console color television were all carved with the little decorative feet that characterizes that same style. A print of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy hung on the wall, next to its ubiquitous companion, the lady in pink; my mother’s idea of culture.
And so on some evening in the late 60s -- the processing date on the edge of the photo says it was developed in June 1968 -- my parents seemed to be having a good time. But this, along with the photo, is also a lie.
You see, I remember the late 1960s. I would have been nine years old in June of 1968, certainly old enough to have vivid memories of what our life was like in those days, and all I can remember is their nightly fighting, the yelling and the screaming. Nearly every night, I remember crying myself to sleep. I remember a hundred times or more going into their bedroom and trying to broker a fragile peace between them, as if they were Israel and the Arabs, but to no avail.
I remember my father sitting there with a steak knife by his side, never brandishing it in a threatening way, but always making sure it was evident that it was there. I never understood how he could do that to my mother. I swore that I would never threaten a woman with a weapon. I swore that I’d be more of a man than my father was.
And yet now, looking at the smiles on their faces, it almost seems as though those memories aren’t real, but I know they are.
You see, old photographs always lie.
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