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Family Portraits

I am mesmerized by the photograph of my father, staring at me from solemn dark eyes just like mine. He is dressed splendidly in a striped suit and white shoes; I cannot tell the colors of anything else because the faded sepia tones of the photograph reflect only subdued lights and darks. A dandy, my father was, with a handkerchief in his pocket and a flower in his lapel, his dark hair perfectly parted on the side. There is an anger in the way he stands, and a shyness; the look on his face is sullen and inviting.

What I Do Best

A self-imposed Cultural Revolution, a grandmother to people of all ages, a to-do list

Quilt On My Bed

The Words Left Unsaid

Words alone had not knitted us together; neither could silence tear the fabric. I remember a crisp fall afternoon when I started to tell my mother that I loved her, that seeing her suffer was more pain than I could bear, that — she held out her arms to stop me. “Don’t speak,” she said, “or we’ll both cry.”

Portraits

The self-portrait is one of my first photographs.

The picture of my grandmother was taken two days before she died. The children on the wall are me and my sister; the picture in the middle is my grandmother, when she was twenty-one.

Martha

Martha is talking to me quickly: she needs another doctor. This one won’t give her the proper medication. She has not been eating well; it is too difficult for her to get out in the snow with her broken foot.

Sunbeams

But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here — the extraordinary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.

Annie Dillard

The Pulse

He is in the pulse, pulsing, pulsing. He is where he belongs, where he is held, so loved. Why did he ever fight this? “Ever have I loved you,” not quite a voice, but he hears it, knows it.

Farewells

An old porch swing, a birthday gift, an even half-dozen

The Written Word

Writing words on paper is particularly arrogant. How presumptuous to believe that words on paper can capture meaning, freeze life, hold it for even a moment.