by Annette Pearson
It’s a series of three, taken outside in the backyard, with a blurred corner of the white house in one corner, if you know where to look, and above that, a few slats of the jalousie windows that have been cranked open. Crowded together in a lawn chair of woven strips of plaid are my very thin mother and my sister, younger and looking happier than I’ve ever known them to be, smiling broadly. They’re not posing for the camera though. You can tell these are candid shots—quick clicks of the shutter, one, another, a third—surely caught by someone who loves them so much he must capture this moment.
In the first photograph, my mother—a scarf wound around her head and her dark-brown hair casting a shadow on her long, slender neck—listens intently as my sister leans close and whispers in her ear. Eight-year-old Bea is freckled with eyes like dark, round olives, short strawberry-blond hair twisted into two untidy braids..
In the second photo, my mother and Bea have turned to gaze directly at each other, delight crinkling the corners of their eyes. They’re sharing a secret, I’m sure, and each time I look at these pictures, I hope it’s about me, that like my father, I too am an invisible part of this sunlit moment.
In the third and final photo, my mother and sister have shifted positions again, and are blithely beaming into the camera. Or, rather, at the photographer, their bright, wide joy radiating, even now, all these years later, in the last of these three photos he left behind.
Image via Pexels by Esra Erdem
“if you know where to look.” drew me in to this wonderful piece. Then, the details: “strips of plaid,” the scarf, the “untidy braids.” held me there. Most of all, I love being in the experience of looking at an old photo and feeling the questions it raises, “Where am I in the picture?” or “How did we /they get from there to here?” What makes this a mini-masterclass in flash is the way we are forced to abandon certainty and hope in the last three words. So good!