Reflections From A Photograph
by BARBARA DICKINSON

Why am I fascinated by the photograph in front of me? It is not large; at best, two inches by four, creased in the middle and faint with years. Once sepia, it is now gray, with white being the only absolute patch clearly definable. It holds my attention as metal draws a magnet.

I am riveted by this souvenir from my mother’s childhood. I am convinced it is she in the picture, not one of her sisters, as it was among the treasures in her personal possessions. My mother was the oldest girl after two brothers. She stands next to a lad who appears to be about six, almost but not quite, as tall as he. They are a solemn and sober pair, even wistful as they pose against a plain and somber backdrop.

Both children are in Sunday clothes, or what today we know as “dress outfits.” My mother wears a formal white dress, perhaps linen, tight at the neck and buttoned to the waist in front. The long-sleeved, close-fitting jacket has wide, embroidered lapels. A forlorn corsage droops dejectedly from the left lapel and she dangles a straw boater in her right fist. She is wearing black stockings and black shoes, almost as dark as the expression on her small pinched face. She neither scowls nor frowns, but is consumed in a piteous and perplexed gaze.

Her big brother (Rollin Franklin?) looks a bit more defiant. Although his eyebrows, too, crease with questions, his lower lip juts out in a pout and he stands rigid and ready. For the camera? For a wedding? This young man is decked out in a four-piece sailor suit with narrow stripes, not unlike some of the dandy expensive outfits toddlers now don at Easter time. His undershirt is a solid “V” beneath the striped tunic that buttons to his waist. His jacket, too, has rows of buttons on both sides. Knickers stop at the top of his black leggings and elegant shiny buckles top the bows on his black slippers. My mother is also wearing a sort of low slipper (were there no Mary Jane’s back then?), but where are her buckles and bows?

In contrast to the desultory manner in which my mother treats her chapeau, the young man stiffly holds his boater possessively against his left leg. Was the wide grosgrain ribbon around the brim navy or red? Was his four-piece suit black and white or navy?

For goodness sake, what was the occasion for this photo-op? With many babies and youngsters in my grandparents’ large extended family, why this pair singled out? The corsage denotes something special: a school graduation? If so, it was kindergarten or first grade at most. Cameras were a luxury item in the early 1900’s so it had to be a very important event for anyone to be photographed, much less two small children.

I wonder if my mother hid this picture because of her hair. The little girl has less hair than her brother: she is shorn to the scalp. The victim of head lice at school? Or possibly the object of her little sister’s scissors. Is she unhappy that someone insists on taking her picture when she knows she looks her worst? Is that why the almost-in-tears face makes me want to cry one hundred and five years later?

I am attached to this memento from the past. Both subjects are deceased, as are the dressmakers who hand-stitched these meticulous outfits and the milliners who created the charming straw hats. The time represented by my photograph is long gone, but it doesn’t hurt to stop now and then to reflect on the foundations that time prepared for us today, in the 21st century.

Barbara Dickinson is a Roanoke novelist and freelance writer.