One of the outcomes of cleaning out closets and rearranging my apartment has been that I have done away with several old, dusty, albums and have saved the photos to some neat boxes with a clever filing system, thanks to pervasive Amazon. Thirty-one years of photographs: from 1965-1996, from eighteen albums, to two lovely boxes to be exact.
The first albums’ photos were in black and white, but I remember the colors of all the outfits as if it were yesterday. I was a Marine Corps wife then and I made most of my clothes, including gowns for the General’s reception, galas, weddings, and officers’ graduations. The only shopping place near the base was the PX and, although we had a Sear’s Roebuck catalog, it was a long way from Amazon. But I did purchase my hats. Not so long ago, I had hat boxes from New Bern, North Carolina, Pensacola, Florida and other bases in between, until a hat box from Strawbridge and Clothier appeared.
These photos had dates and little comments on the side, with my handwriting, and even some spelling mistakes, which I have left intact in the photo box. I was all of twenty years old then and, obviously, still learning English. During my one year of high school in this country–I don’t know how–I had won a prize for best director in the drama group. I can see how this came in handy as mother-photographer. I could set the little scenes beautifully: matching outfits, perfect smiling children, daddy if he wasn’t on deployment, and the mentioned dated, precious notes for posterity.
During my first pregnancy, before the Marine left for Vietnam, I made an entire wardrobe. I think I graduated then from Simplicity to Vogue sewing patterns and the photos are suddenly in color! Once my first daughter was born, she inherited some of the remnants leftover and we dressed alike on special occasions. I didn’t know yet how un-American this was and how much my two daughters would object to this Spanish tradition. But my specialty were children’s bibs made out of fingertip towels trimmed with all kinds of ribbons, rick-rack and other colorful sewing notions. Some of you reading this post, maybe have received one or two of these bibs as gifts for your children or grandchildren. Now there are no fingertips towels to be found anywhere, I must have used the entire supply!
There were hundreds of photos from trips to Spain in these albums, now with the simple “Travel” marker in the boxes. These photos are larger and there is no space for comments, but they are obvious: my school in Madrid, the Retiro Park, the beautiful buildings in the city, Valencia with its luminous beaches, Castilian landscapes, historical monuments… Most of all there is our amazing family resemblance with the Spanish relatives. I remember a trip when my godmother told us that one of her daughters was “feíta” (a tad ugly) and I wondered for a long time if one of mine had inherited those traits. They all looked so beautiful to me. The trait I obviously was losing was the wicked Spanish humor.
An often-sad characteristic of these albums is how people appear and disappear. One husband here and another there, a musician for a Marine; my brother’s first wife and her family; my own mother; my father’s second wife with the sudden appearance of the third. More family resemblance as you can tell. Not all can be happy memories; one of the saddest being Kurt, the handsome prom date of my oldest daughter who died of Aids much, much too early.
Some of the happiest moments were the months when my twelve-year-old nephew lived with us in Narberth and all the trips we made together, showing him the United States. Although there was also irony here; there is one magical photo with the twin towers in New York City in the background and another in front of Carnegie Hall. Little did we know then about September 11, or that Yago would play one of his inaugural concerts at the famous venue when he became a musician himself.
There are too many photos of snowfalls during the winters of 1994-1996, showing my amazement with the snow, which I have never outgrown. Graduations, Halloweens, Christmases, birthdays, repeat themselves marking time.
The word whimsy is another one of those terms that don’t translate well into Spanish. AI gives over twenty meanings from capricious to extravagant to fantastic, but I don’t like any of those to describe my family’s life in photographs. I prefer playful, ludic (from the Latin ludere, to play), where is my father when I need him?