Picture Power or Family on Film

It was my second Christmas. I was not even two years old. I don’t remember it of course, but there is the photo. My father, a news photographer, took thousands of pictures of me and my siblings over the years. There are a lot of great photos of the four of us. But this photo taken of us posing with our gifts around the perfectly decorated Christmas tree is special. It’s iconic. It documents a defining moment in our lives as three brothers and one sister. It would be our only Christmas in a town that none of us were born in. The one year that my father sought the greener grass of the New York Times owned newspaper in Chattanooga. A year idealized in my mind by the recounted stories my parents and siblings shared about our year living atop a mountain. The year my older siblings would sit, barefoot, in the open windows of the local church on Sundays. The windows that they would hop out of when the sermon was finished. And then they would dash to our little homestead, carefree and happy. The year our Christmas card featured all of us as cartoon hillbillies, our chimney smoke spelling out Seasons Greetings in the background.  It was the year that brought us our only white Christmas. They always ask, “Don’t you remember?”  I don't remember.

Of course all these things were photographically documented and filed into piles and piles of contact sheets and prints filling up cardboard boxes and plastic bins. But the photo was framed. It always sat in a place of honor wherever we lived after that. It moved with us back to our hometown where my father returned to the afternoon paper that he had left just twelve months before. It was always prominently displayed, a testament to a simpler time. A perfect moment. There I am sitting astride a little four wheeled scooter. Our big sister in her cat glasses proudly displaying a large box labeled Silly Safari. My oldest brother, the tall one, posed drumsticks in hand as he stood ready to play his brand new snare drum. And my middle brother, five years older, but closest in age to me. Forever frozen in time in a stance that he would be forever associated with. Guitar strap around his neck, holding his new guitar like it was an extension of himself. A seasoned veteran of the honky-tonk scene.

Photos are potent. Images last. We remember our important moments in modern history not by the news articles that were written of the account, but by an instant of light captured on film. The moment, burned onto paper, and then onto our collective consciousness. The most powerful of these impressions become our mental representation of the zeitgeist of entire eras.  Iwo Jima. The Little Rock Nine. The mushroom cloud. Kiss in Times Square.  The Hindenburg. Dr. King on The Mall. Lone man stopping tanks in Tiananmen. Ali fiercely reigning over a limp Sonny Liston. There are thousands of photographs like these that become more than single points in time. They define the time. Some may merely capture a moment when the course of history changed, but some pictures become the agents of change. Light and mirrors create reflections of our strengths and weaknesses, our victories and our failures, our courage and our cowardice. They can reflect our need for change. But they can also contain imagery that renders nostalgia into reality.

 

My family has boxes full of our own iconography. But the photo captures our own little familial zeitgeist. I have wondered if it happened to capture a moment when the four of us were forming our own identities? Or was it an image with such strength that it began to shape how we thought of ourselves? Did it set in motion lifetimes of trying to live up to that perfect moment? This is not a candid shot. We are posed next to the tinsel laden tree. Everyone has a role. My oldest brother as the drummer. My middle brother as the musical prodigy. My sister fashionable and fun. And me? I’m the cute one who can’t yet talk.

It’s almost perfect in its representation of who we were, but also who we would become. My drummer brother is clearly the leader in the photo. He stands tall over the rest of us. He is at the ready to pound out a rhythmic tempo for us to keep in time with. No picture fully represents anyone. But it’s as if the magic of a special Christmas focused its power through the lens of Dad’s camera and “Snap!”, our places in the family were permanently printed. The drummer continues to set the tempo. He keeps us grounded. He leads the march. Every family needs a drum major who stands tall at the front of the pack, holds up his baton (or map of Disney World) and keeps us moving forward.

My sister lives up to the image as well. She is fashionable and fun. She is the most social and outgoing of all of us. She loves to meet new people and like the old saying, she has never met a stranger. The box she holds in the picture is labeled Silly Safari. The course her life has taken has been like a safari. Not silly, of course. No one’s life is silly. But she has managed to maintain a passion for fun adventures even in the face of more tragedy than any one person should have to endure. But just as the photo would suggest, she emerges from these trials with grace, a positive attitude, and fashionably dressed.

And then there is the guitar player. My middle brother. It seems that the focused Christmas magic, the gift of the guitar, and the enduring framed photograph formed a transformational triumvirate that would govern his passion for music and performing for a lifetime. Out of all of us, the photo seems to best portray the essence of who he is. If something has strings, he can play it. If there is a stage, he will be on it. He is the natural entertainer of our family. We can count on him to deliver the right comic line with perfect timing when we need to laugh. And we all need to laugh and hear music. That is his role.

So that leaves me, the baby. Could that be my role? Forever destined to roll through life on a scooter, babbling incoherently? Some may see me that way, nattering on about nothing. But honestly, if the camera was magic and transformational it must have bounced off me like Voldemort’s killing curse bounced off baby Harry Potter. So maybe the picture is not responsible for snapping us into our life long roles. Maybe it just captured a moment when my siblings were developing their own identities. I was still a lump of clay plopped on a scooter.  I could still become anything. The only thing is, I cannot think of a photo that captures that transformational moment for me. Maybe that moment hasn’t happened yet.  Maybe I’m just finding myself right now. 

Quick, someone grab a camera and capture this moment as I type this sentence.

However, I do think the picture hints at my role in our family. The scooter I sit on has wheels. And I was certainly always on the move. From an early age my parents gave me tremendous freedom to wander our portion of the city. If you lived in the general proximity, I probably showed up at your door to see if your kids were able to come out and play. I most likely was an unexpected and frequent guest for dinner at your home. I spent hours exploring the woods and lakes that could be found in pockets between neighborhoods close by. I would lose track of time and space as I hyper-focused on a Pinball machine at the local game room. My mother would call neighbor after neighbor to find me or would eventually drive up to the game-room to retrieve me. My sister-in-law recently commented that the family would often be sitting together when someone would say, “Where is LeGette?”

If my family were a jigsaw puzzle, I know the piece that I would be. If you cut the photo into interlocking shapes and then worked diligently to reassemble us, I would be that piece that is inevitably  missing just when you think you have put it all back together. The piece you have to scramble to find. The one that drives you crazy because it is missing and you need to have a complete picture. The piece that seems to have wandered off. You rake your fingers through the surrounding carpet. You get up and make sure that you are not sitting on me; I mean sitting on the puzzle piece. And then I just show up, probably in a place that you have already looked. You place me into the hole in the puzzle and the picture is complete. Our family is whole again.

My role is to be there when the puzzle needs completion.

 I don’t remember that Tennessee Christmas in the photo. The one that looked so perfect. But that does not matter. I was part of it. I have proof in the boxes of pictures. The moment is rooted deeply in my psyche. More importantly though, I have a lifetime of Christmases, weddings, graduations, births and birthdays as part of a family.

The family where I fit. The family of interlocking shapes that need each other to be complete.