LOOKING BACK

My dad was much better at remembering the good times than my mother. To listen to my mother you would’ve thought that her life had been one long strand of misery and deprivation. But I don’t remember any of that. And the old photographs I am looking at today do not bear that out. I am leafing through snapshots taken in those days after the war in the years before and just after my mom and dad were married. I see the playful poses….my mother jumping on his shoulders, the two of them mugging for the camera. They are enjoying the outdoors….skiing, hanging out at the beach, riding on a boat. They are almost always with close friends, laughing at parties, drinks in hand. There are even happy times with me as a small child. I can tell from the photos that I was loved.

My dad almost always remembered the fun stuff. The childhood pranks. The oddball characters that he hung out with. He could always come up with a funny story or two about those early days on the streets of San Francisco. But my mother would dwell upon things she lost somewhere along the line. There was a bitterness and despair that was so deep I cannot fathom it, because as far as I can tell we grew up in a great environment. We were all healthy, happy kids. We were mercifully bereft of any great tragedies or terrifying events. We were well cared for and well thought of. We made it through high school and beyond. We married, had kids, developed senses of humor and independence, and became good citizens. Yet somehow life let my mother down in a big way.

There came a time when she could no longer stand my dad and only communicated with him through shouts and gripes. She let the television set turn her once quick mind into mush. She let the long life of a subservient housewife beat her down. But my father was not without fault in all of this. Long ago he shackled her independence, kept a tight rein on the purse strings, determined directions, and made too many important decisions on his own. Some time in the late 1960s, the two of them set off on different paths though still bound together by marriage. My dad chose to live in the moment and let the cards fall wherever they would fall. My mother elected to chain herself to a past that became more disagreeable the more she thought about it.

I am not sure what happened way back when. Perhaps nothing at all but the fabrications of a woman somehow disappointed by life. A woman who wanted something other than an obligatory postwar marriage, a house in the suburbs, and three odd and willful children. But the early photographic proof remains that there was once some happiness and joy that through time become cracked and stained with age. There are stories in these pieces at paper that I can never unlock.