Grandmother

We celebrated Grandmother's birthday this weekend.  She's been living for 90 years.  My parents' house was full of old pictures of my grandmother throughout her life.  I spent a long time studying each one.  As I gazed at the pictures of Grandmother in her youth, I found myself trying to get more.  You know what it's like when you are trying to see something in a picture because the angle is just not right?  You want to see what is behind the person's left shoulder, or what the writing in the picture says.  But you can't quite get there.  In a picture, all of the information is there, but it's only as clear as the focusing of the camera.  You can only decipher what the camera saw, not what the photographer was attempting to capture.  Pictures don't talk or sing or narrate.  They just are.  They are a window to the past but there is only one side. You can look through it, but you can't climb through it.

Grandmother had pictures out from all of her albums.  She had the pictures sorted by child/grandchild and event.  She wanted us to have the albums - pictures some of us had never seen.  I recognized most of the ones she had picked for me; although, there were a precious few which were new.  Like the one of Caroline scrunching up her nose at Poppy through the window that connected the upstairs to the kitchen in their house...or the pictures of our first dog (Amber) and my cousin David's first 2 girls at my house in Edmond before I even knew I was pregnant with Caroline.  What a treasure!

The pictures I was most interested in were those of Grandmother and Pop before any of us were around.  They are black and white, but not to Grandmother.  She could give me all of the details.  Like the portrait of her in the navy and white dress with the red cherry pin and matching earrings.  Or the snapshot of her with her friends right before she married.  Her dress was blue - "between royal and navy" - with a matching hat and shoes.  She always looked happy and so beautiful.  The shots of Poppy were so handsome.  They were taken long ago when he was working for Conoco and going home to a young family.  Those were the days when they were teaching my dad and my aunt about the love that they had together.  The same love that they would give to us as grandchildren.  I couldn't count the number of times that they told me, but I can remember it like yesterday.  It's the love that you can see in the photos and the same love that I can feel in my heart.  The warmth and peace and happiness that I feel every time I talk to my grandmother and in every memory of Pop.  The photos show a story, but it's Grandmother's to tell.  I don't really need a window; I just need a few more hours to sit by her side and listen.