Photos Bring Back a Childhood
/The Boston Herald
She slipped them into an envelope and mailed them without a note for no note was necessary. The pictures, photocopies but as clear as the autumn days on which they were taken, arrived brimming with words.
"Mama. Come here! Look at me, Mama. Watch! See?”
"Be careful, Robbie! Hold on. Take Jennifer's hand. That's a good boy.”
“Smile, Rob. Smile, Jen.”
Along with the pictures and words came sounds, too, high-pitched voices, giggles, squeals, and other things that the camera couldn't catch, but which are there anyway: cold on a child's cheeks, the feel of small arms, dirt on little hands. Along with the pictures and the words came the memory of my son falling on the ground, skinning his knee, sobbing. I kiss him and he smiles and I smile, too, and lift him back on to the "Wheee!" swing, then walk to where Judy and I are sitting in a park in Quincy watching our children play.
An Aladdin's lamp in an envelope. See? It's October, 1971 and I am eight months pregnant with my second child and not in the pictures, but there in the shadows watching my first born play. It is a perfect day, a perfect time, for Humpty Dumpty hasn't fallen yet and all the king's horses and all the king's men are somewhere else, enjoying the day.
What a gift these pictures are.
Judy must have gone looking for them after we met a few weeks ago, after so many years of not seeing each other, after she flew back home to Florida. She must have had to search through boxes of photos because these are not perfect snapshots, the kind you frame and keep on a shelf.
They're flawed, all six of them, a few too dark, the others too light and not one centered. And yet they're wonderful, buried treasures, really, because they unearth a few small forgotten moments that might never have been thought of again, but for the film on which they were captured and stored.
There are Robbie and Jennifer wearing matching plaid outfits, which I made. Robbie in knickers, of all things, and a beret and long white socks and brown shoes. And Jennifer in the same tan plaid, sewn into a skirt and cape. Both blond, both smiling, they look like twins or at least brother and sister. We liked that, Judy and I. We liked to pretend they were.
There they are in blue plaid this time and knickers again, heaven help us, plus fringe on Jen's cape. And there they are in normal clothes, the pair of them, on a November day, standing on the "Wheee!" merry-go-round, squinting into the sun, made round and unsteady by shirts under sweaters, cloth pants under corduroys, the raw November cold still chilling them.
Why does it hurt to remember happy times? Why when it ends the way you hoped it would, with the kids grown and healthy and happy, does it still feel sometimes, when you look back, when pictures you've never seen before arrive in the mail, like a loss?
Robbie is Rob now, 28 in a few days, a grown man, not a boy. I know this. When he comes home for a visit or when I talk to him on the phone, I don't think about how he used to play with Fisher Price letters on the refrigerator, or how he loved his plastic work bench best of all, or how every day at 5 p.m. he sat transfixed in front of the TV watching Mr. Rogers. Yes, I loved the child he was and I miss that little boy. But I love, too, the man he's become.
I wouldn't trade now for then. At least I don't think I would. And yet, when I look at these pictures I yearn, not to go back forever, but for a single day, an afternoon, an hour, a few moments, and feel once more a child's sweet kiss, a hug, a little hand in mine.
