Walking the Wall

My mother keeps all of our family photos in a box. I’m not talking
about all those little photo boxes you can buy to line up and index
your photos in perfect organizational form. This is  a large, old,
metal box with picnic basket handles and a dented, hinged lid. Inside
this box are photographs from when my oldest brother was a baby 38
years ago, to present day pictures. I’m certain that somewhere out in
the world, a photo conservationist or two turns uneasily in their sleep
at the prospect of all that chaos and disorganization. Yes,
organization has its place, and being able to grab an album containing
pictures from June 12, 1967 to February 9, 1968 can be very handy and
convenient–but…of course, there has to be a but.

There is something incredible about reaching your hand into the box,
like we sit down and do on occasion, and pull out a handful of photos
as precious as magic beans. I might end up with a picture of my dad in
full Grizzly Adams mode–bushy hair, great red beard, black plastic rim
glasses looking like some mix of mountaineer and hippy–and up with the
picture comes a memory: my dad got
his hair cut, disappeared into the bathroom to shave off his beard and
this man came out the bathroom that I didn’t know…he was the most
handsome man in the world and I decided then, at that young age, that
surely I would marry him. Underneath that might be a picture of
the duplex we lived in when I was very young, my aunt and uncle living
above us. There is my mom sitting on the ledge of the porch, covering
her face with a paper–and a memory: my
aunt used to have me upstairs to eat a delicacy–pickles sliced in the
middle, but not all the way through, the slit making the perfect spot
to wiggle in a slice of cheese.  Under that, a picture of
me all dressed in a gauzy, pink formal dress (yes, D, pink), my eyes
large and melodramatic as a silent film actress haming it up as my mom
pins a corsage on the dress: Junior/Senior
banquet, my junior year, 1985. I remember standing in front of the
constructed the photo backdrop with my boyfriend (now husband) and
getting yet another picture with huge, melodramatic eyes as he chose
that moment in time to pinch my rear end. Another picture in
the handful might be of my younger brother, Craig, sitting in the grass
with a pained expression on his face, holding his hands away from the
ground: Craig hated the feel of
grass when he was a baby. My brother and I would take him out into the
apartment courtyard and set him in the middle of the grass to watch his
comical procession to the sidewalk…crawling on the tips of his toes
and fingers looking like the stiff legged baby elephant in Jungle Book
who paraded through the tall grass.

A picture–a memory. No chronological order, or themed pattern,
just grab and snatch snapshots of memories that filled my lifetime.
“Look at this one, mom! Can you believe you wore that lime green
bikini!?”; “Joanna, do you remember me sleeping in your crib with you
at night”; “Emily! You had the most rubbery face, always so
expressive!”; “Oh wow, I remember sitting and reading Peter and the
Wolf with Craig so many times I could say it by heart”; “Do you
remember how you and dad and I would take turns walking and rocking
Sarah with hour after hour of croup?”; “Aw, look, its Grandma holding
Michael, I’m so glad she lived to see my children”; “Look at this one
of Grandpa S. holding Craig–I wish he could have met my children, I
know he would have loved them”; “Can you just believe Dad’s sideburns!
Do you remember that year he decided that humans had no need of
deodorant and would natural smell well if left to nature!?”…it truly
is a box of memories that I hope no one ever decides to organize.