Thursday, August 1, 2013

captured

As I troll through old family photos, something becomes very evident. My grandfather loved to take family pictures. He had a vision, a dream that was irresistible; his smiling wife and children gazing gladly camera-ward.
Life has a way of being uncooperative though doesn't it, our dreams elusive.
My grandfather had the best of intentions too poor fellow.
He chose a sunny day and a grassy bit of yard.
He mustered the troops.
He positioned his camera just so and repositioned his troops.
He attached a string to the camera and wound it back, back, back to the waiting, restive group.
Instructions were given.
He seized the string.
Hold it, hold it, smile, look over there, smile......
How hard could it be to get seven people to smile as they gaze nonchalantly in the same direction?
Pretty hard apparently.
About the same odds as being struck by lightening I'd say.
Strangely though, those failed attempts to record a golden moment of time have achieved something even grander.
They have captured the dynamic of family life, fraught with emotion but infused with joy and love.
Well, maybe not joy in this picture. Grandfather has a defeated look. Grandmother looks wan.
The children are variously somber and sober. Hmmmmm, needs more practice.
A marked improvement. Some smiles, the dog looks happy.
Almost there. A lovely warmth although gazes are divided in three directions.
Ahhhh, much better. Happiness all 'round. Still not all looking at the camera but nobody is concerned about a little detail like that anymore.

2 comments:

  1. I stumbled across your blog through another and this post really touched me. As a kid I would spend hours patiently asking my grandmother who people were in the photographs she had and loved the history of each(always slightly short of the truth and heavy on the criticism but hey, that was my grandmother's stories!) I wonder if our blogs will stand the family history test of time! Sarah

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  2. I'm glad you happened by. thanks for the note. If we don't write down our stories, someone far down the road will do it for us but that is fine too. Even people that shared the same moments, remember them differently.

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