Scanning Old Photographs

Recently I have been scanning old family photos to store on my computer, and I have found it to be an oddly compelling and absorbing task. Most are black and white images of my parents in their youth, and many are of my siblings and me during our childhood days in Brooklyn. I wondered at some point if any of the pictures might be of interest to my youngest brother, so I mentioned it to him in an email. (I’m going to call him Ethan here in case he ever looks at this blog and thinks my copious outpourings violate his privacy.) I

was already sixteen when Ethan was born, and we had moved from the city to Long Island, so we’re almost like different generations, and our memories don’t always overlap. (Our eldest brother -- let’s call him Rupert -- was 21 at the time of Ethan’s birth.)

Anyway, when our father died, Ethan was only eleven years old, and he had to grow up rather abruptly. To this day, he does not have much time, patience, or reason for nostalgia. 

So Ethan thought it might be nice to have a few more pictures of our father, sure, but overall, he wasn’t terribly interested. He also had a question and a comment:

“Why do you enjoy looking back anyway? If there are fond memories for you and reasons for such sentimentality, then you are lucky -- I certainly feel little of that for my abbreviated childhood.”

Well, it isn't that I "enjoy" looking back; I cannot quite explain the compulsion I have to go there, but, no, I generally wouldn't call it pleasurable. As a matter of fact, sometimes it sort of hurts. What, then, is my motivation? 

Maybe I am trying to salvage something, to see it differently, to make some meaning of it, to reclaim or reinvent it somehow. 

Is it a form of archaeology, perhaps? 

Myth making? 

And if I go back far enough, there are  sweet memories, yes. I remember going for drives with my father, for example, when he was still robust and dashing and glinting with dreams, or playing in Prospect Park with my siblings. (The picture way at the top is one of my favorites of my beloved brother Eddie with me. We had that one Davy Crockett hat between us and shared custody of it.) So some of the old pictures confirm these tender memories, and that's like discovering that nice things you dreamed or imagined really in fact happened. 

Other photos reveal aspects of our family history with which I am less familiar -- the faded sepia faces of relatives I never knew; my older brothers looking like ‘Lil Rascal tykes on Coney Island Avenue before I was born; the handsome couple who would one day become my parents posing for each other in the park. 

 And with the latter, I inevitably think of a poem by Sharon Olds called “I Go Back to May 1937” in which she writes: 

I want to go up to them and say Stop,

don’t do it-she’s the wrong woman,

he’s the wrong man…  

(But I want to live.)

I have to admit, though, that looking at these photographs with the knowledge of how it all turned out does leave me gasping sometimes, and the sum of it seems to hold a disproportionate amount of heartbreak and loss. 

But maybe this whole business is just a desire to stare straight on at something that might otherwise be too dark and confusing, in order to render it visible and manageable. I keep telling myself that if I look at the past and write about it and even in some way cherish it, I can make some meaning of it, and if I can apply the meaning to my life, it will be as though the struggling and sadness was not all for naught. It is a way of keeping the people I loved alive, not only in memory, but in some current pulse as well, some ongoingness, perhaps, of the goodness that was in them, or some posthumous manifestation of their hopes. 

And I try to tell myself, too, that in the context of all time, the relative recency of an event does not necessarily give it more weight than everything that preceded it, and that the small sweet things are not destroyed or negated simply because painful things followed. 

I try to explain this to Ethan. He is a psychologist, a pragmatist, a logical type who does not indulge fools or murky babbling.  “Actually,” he writes, “I thought that your interest in ‘looking back’ and family memorabilia was something of a hobby, like someone enjoying stamp collecting. If it’s actually painful, that’s more like the kind of thing one does when in mourning, but this would be a rather extended bereavement. I don’t know if it’s ever possible to be rid of the weight of certain losses and tragedies, but what’s the point of dwelling there?”

I begin to wonder how Rupert, from his vantage point of 21 years' seniority over Ethan, might feel about these old pictures and the memories (or inventions) they engender. I ask him via email if he wants to reminisce with me, or even just tell me what he remembers about certain pictures. “I do not like going back there,” he writes, “not only because it was all so tragic, but because I especially don't like the person I was back then. I feel much shame in the fact that as the eldest I was in a position to help with some of the problems, but I mostly ran away from them.”

It surprises and troubles me that Rupert feels shame...for being young, for being human. It seems unfounded and unfair, especially after so many decades. Then of course it occurs to me that I too carry a burden of self-blame for things that were beyond my control. I guess it’s called survivor guilt; I hadn’t realized that Rupert and I share this. I suggest to Rupert that since we have borne witness to each other’s early lives in such a unique way, then maybe we also have the authority to forgive and absolve each other. 

He doesn’t respond.

So I head back into the old photographs, staring into the sunlight and shadow of yesterday, like the curator of a tiny museum that no one else wants to visit. My connection to the people and places within is powerful and undeniable, and I value it even when it hurts. 

The stories that I salvage are a part of who I am. I was born of them. I continue them. 

And I want to live, as Sharon Olds proclaims in that poem I mentioned earlier. 

I am thinking of that poem again, and how Olds compares the images of her parents to paper dolls and wants to bang them together "as if to strike sparks from them", and how finally she gives up, finding her role, and says: 

Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it. 

Maybe it's as simple as that.