SOLSCMarch 12: A Family Photo

             I love this photo because it shows so much of family dynamics that I was not aware was being revealed.

            By which I mean, that’s me, on the left, leaning away from all these other people and staring into the distance. I’m 13, and I know I was thinking something like this: I don’t know what I am doing in this family. They don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them. I sometimes wished I was adopted, or found in a cabbage patch (old fairy tales sometimes had babies found in a cabbage patch; the Cabbage Patch Kids didn’t exist in the ’50s), but I also knew my parents were married two years before I was born so they probably were my parents.

            My father, on the right, looks very pleased with himself. Maybe he’d been out in the garden, or inventing something in his workshop in the basement/garage. I know we were living out here in what was still country in West Haven, Connecticut, because that’s where he wanted to be. I didn’t know until many years later that he’d been blacklisted after WWII (“I belonged to a political discussion group,” he told me, and a woman in the group talked to the FBI), so perhaps he felt he was hiding out here.

            My sister is between us, very unhappy. She never felt she belonged in our family either; she felt stupid because her interests were spiritual, while the rest of us had no concern for anything like that.

            My brother looks like he might be the same age as my sister, but he’s two and a half years older, 11 to her almost 9 (unless this photo was taken after August 10). Was this the year she was still taller than he was? I’m guessing he might not have been comfortable with that, and I’ve never asked him.

            And my mother looks so delighted with him, like he’s her favorite, which wasn't particularly true in real life. Maybe it’s because of what he is about to read, as he’d holding a piece of paper in his hands and looking expectantly at whoever is taking this photograph—it’s probably our grandfather. What was he going to read? I have no memory.

            We’re on the patio in the back of our small house, built on an acre, from a floor plan my father may have bought from Sear’s.

-------------------------------------

I’m participating in the 17th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 13 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!