Pictures
IT WAS LATE September, and a thin film of sawdust crept up between my toes as I made my way across the attic floor. The stale air felt cool for the first time in months, its dank smell redolent of mothballs and neglect. High in the rafters leaked the oily light of a solitary bulb, creating the atmosphere usually reserved for seedy pool halls.
I scrutinized the sad cluster of boxes strewn about. “Listen up,” I said, “Don’t hide anything from me.” Like a fearless curator, I delved into the jungle of antiquity in search of something worthy of admiration, which was, in this case, a baby picture for my senior yearbook. It didn’t take long to find. There is only one place for the shoebox containing the relics of childhood to bide its time, to remain undisturbed in its reticence, and that is in the loneliest corner of the attic.
My hands alighted on the box like magnets. Memories I thought I’d consigned to oblivion came flooding back, and for ten minutes I rode wave after wave of sweet nostalgia. The baby book felt insignificant in my hands, almost weightless, as though years of abandonment in the attic had drained it of the very history I sought. And in a way, it did. As I teased open the fraying cover, out fell two black-and-white photos - not of me, but of two people with histories of their own.
The first picture was of my mother. She’s perching at the edge of a bed, pillow on her lap, looking coyly at the camera with lidded eyes. I could tell from her girlish visage and the ebony tresses cascading effortlessly down her shoulders that she wasn’t much older than nineteen when the photo was taken. I smiled at the sight of her, this doe-eyed starlet, who, in 1986, finally got her taste of college freedom. My eyes grew big with newfound appreciation. What I saw said little about the woman I’ve always known as my mother. Now, twenty-three years later, she has lost much of that casual beauty, that aura of delicate femininity.
The second picture was of my father. He’s standing languidly with his back against a wall, in the same room as my mother, clad in pale jeans and a black wife beater. Looped around his neck is a leather scapular, ironic and out of place because he is a bad boy and a rascal. Tousled black hair supplements his dark, brooding eyes. Like my mother, he was nineteen in the photo - a headstrong and overconfident young man who lived and loved for himself. Few traces of that old devil-may-care attitude are apparent anymore.
My parents crossed paths in high school - he, the star basketball captain, and she, the student body president. Popularity came easily, and they formed a web of mutual friends on which they spun a vibrant social life. It wasn’t until college that they fell in love. It is a love I’ve often taken for granted, sometimes lost faith in, and on occasion have ceased to believe exists. But at nineteen, they had it all. They had time for unbounded lives. They had ambitions. They had each other. They didn’t need to think of anyone else. It would be a baby that made them grow up too fast.
I stayed in the attic for a long time looking at those pictures. One in each hand, I gathered dust and lost myself in thought. What stirred me the most was the way they gazed into the camera. Their eyes pierced glass, straight into the photographer’s soul. I saw in them expressions of unconditional trust, of muted affection. And the reason is simple. They photographed each other.
I can almost imagine it. It’s a Saturday afternoon. The two of them are plagued with boredom, eyes still drowsy and glazed over from either sleep or a hangover or both. My mom reaches over to the bedside table, takes my father’s camera, squints into the viewfinder, and tells him to smile. He refuses. Right now all he wants to do is fall asleep again. But she insists, and he finally looks at her, at the pretty girl at the edge of the bed, and lets the corners of his mouth rise slightly in a half-contained grin. Peals of laughter erupt from her like confetti.