Somebody Blinked
You know the pictures--grown-ups posed, children stilled, cameras click...
"Cheeeeeeeeeese!"
Hurray!
That Haley's Comet Family Moment When Everyone Shines exists for all time and for all to see. Facebook it. Email it. Make prints for the Christmas card. This is concrete proof that you-and possibly,(
but not likely, let's not kid ourselves) your siblings are just really quite fine.
Oh, but Hell--look again, a little closer. Maybe it's someone on the end. Maybe someone in the back. But Somebody blinked!
Ruins the whole shot. And, of course, there's no second chance because those people, in that moment, will never shine quite like that again. Parents will age. Marriages will falter. Children will sulk. Schedules will conflict. Grudges will sprout.
Sheesh. Family, right?
But maybe next year we could all... right?
See, I was part of a picture like that when we were on vacation this summer. So cool. All of us. My husband's extended family. People I haven't seen since, geez, our wedding, maybe. We had a vacation cookout and we told funny stories, and the kids were lunatics and then we took this picture by the pool. Everyone looks happily wind-tousled and sunburnt, the kids made goofy faces and I knelt behind Fuzzy (how else to keep him still?) and smiled, and waited for the six timers on the six cameras to go off.
But it was in that new and happy moment that I realized that
my family would never have such a thing. We missed out big. There will never be that picture.
Somebody Blinked.
My family, my parents, my brother and sister and their spouses, the cousins, my kids, extra friend-along kids--I know now that I won't ever smile and wait for that flash. Not because I don't show up on film (although that's always my first excuse when I see a camera), but because, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, we lost our chance.
That smiling wind-tousled-by-the-pool moment passed by my family, as casually as salty breezes do, drifting past us to some other family, by some other pool,on some other vacation. And probably this family, this
other vacation family, didn't have to research the number of doors, the depth of the pool, and where the fence ended for their autistic kid. And this other family probably didn't have to worry about Grandma stealing candy from Harris Teeter, or grabbing food off the grandkids' plates during dinner. This family, this
let's-set-aside-our-differences-for-the-week-and-relax family, I'll bet they took
lots of pictures.
I know I would. But then,that's because I know what we've lost in the last few years.
How it has changed us, hardened us, made us look away.
My dad tells me that mom is losing language entirely now. Agnosia. Part of the Pick's Disease Package. My mother, once so very quick-witted and gracious, is fading with the tangled fury of a late-summer rip-tide. There are no lifeguards and swimming parallel won't help at all, this I know.
My sister is silent in a different way. Her blind fury at me (and for what? how many goddamn times can I ask? you
know I've asked
at least that many times and then some) has silenced her and thus, she cannot, will not explain.
Gone.
And my brother, the only one who can and/or will make words into sense, had some
thing, some infection, and almost died in the ICU not too long ago. . I didn't know. And I almost lost him. That suddenly. In the blink of an eye.
But there was this one time, tho, we planned to rent a beach house together, all of us.
A lifetime ago. Big Boy was not yet big at all. Fuzzy and LRHF were strictly conceptual in nature. My mother had only just begun to be a tiny bit lost, and my siblings seemed well and happy and tolerant, if nothing else.
But really? not so much. Because, you see, it was at that time that my brother, my gentle, true, bear of a big brother, broke a bit, took his loaded gun and prepared to end his life. Now,he did not. He managed to make the right phone call and get the right care. But it sure did put an end to the vacation plans. And it was the first sign, I think, that we would never, ever be that vacation family with the pool picture. The rest came
steadily, gradually, stealthfully. We learned our family secrets and learned that knowing them was almost, but not quite, as bad as hiding them. We became wary and careful with each other. Finally, we simply stopped. Stopped family-ing. No kidding.
So simple. One good picture, right?
I must have blinked.
No comments:
Post a Comment