Sorting pictures

It was the day Robyn and I married, and Dad was glad to be there, but feeling awkward. Someone he didn't know very well, probably LeRoy or my sister in law Michelle, asked him to stand for a picture. Mom is teasing him, I can tell from her expression. Looking at this picture, I remember the complexity of their relationship.




At this time, Dad was battling with paranoia, combatting delusions and fears he knew were unreal, but which he could not ignore. Coming to an event with many unknown folks and an immense volume of small talk would have been very hard for him. Mom's helping out her by giving him "the ass," sotto voce, as it were.



Nineteen-and-a-half years ago, this is what they looked like. My mom was 51, only two years older than I am now. Dad was 59. I feel as though I am looking back through a very long lens, but it really hasn't been that long, has it?



Michelle gave my father-in-law LeRoy the gift of sorting and categorizing his photgraphs, using I multiple-drawer filing system. I was truly amazed and appalled, as I think I mentioned, by this effort. Michelle struggles with an anxious and controlling nature and this gift sort of personifies her, in that she got to take someone else's stuff, put it into categories of her own choosing, and then sort all of it. I am sure it gave her great pleasure. As she demonstrated the results, we stumbled upon these picture of my folks.


I love this picture of my Mom. This is who I remember from the good old days. My bullet-proof, teflon Mother, capable of finessing any situation, of handling any obstacle, sure of her place in the world. She was witty, smart, insightful, and I didn't know as much about her as I thought I did. I had it all wrong. I saw Mom as the reasonable parent, the one who could handle Dad's idiosyncracies, could penetrate his isolative nature, could hold everything together.


I didn't know that my Dad was the memory, the detail guy, the tax preparer, check book balancer, medication tracker. I didn't know that Mom was at least as inclined to withdraw from others, to isolate and become secretive in a crisis. I didn't appreciate that my father was not the most stubborn partner in this marriage. Children don't know their parents. We know what we wish to know, attribute to them all sorts of qualities they may have half-earned, qualities we need to think they have. In the end, like us, they are fallible, flawed, feeling their way along the dark corridors, just as we ourselves find we must.


In 20 years, what will our children discover about us? What will they have presumed about who we are? What photos are hidden in drawers, boxes, trunks, waiting to be sorted by some busy in-law intent on a favor? Who will we turn out to have been?