Comfortable Faces

In the house I think of as "the house I grew up in" (even though I lived in four different houses from infancy to college, and this one no longer than the others), one wall of the family room was covered in photographs. They were arranged in three not-quite-separate columns: on the left was my dad's family, on the right was my mom's, and in the middle was the three of us.

I loved that wall of photographs. I loved that I knew the names of all the people and how they were related to me. I loved that visitors always seemed interested and wanted to know who was who. There was something essentially comforting about that mass of images, and I've been wanting to recreate it in my own house for years.

I've asked my mom for photos, and she's brought sheaves on various visits. When we were in Wisconsin last week, Andy's mom covered the dining room table in boxes and albums, and we sorted through them all evening, picking ones to take home with us -- not to keep, but to scan and return. We've already framed and hung a few of my family; now we can do the same for Andy's. And we scanned a bunch of my family, too, and posted dozens of each on my Flickr site and sent links to relatives. I hope everyone enjoys them, and I really hope that they feel moved to cough up some photos of their own which can also be scanned and returned.

I've picked the dining room as our family gallery. The walls don't lend themselves to the three-column approach; also, I prefer a more scattered look. But there's lots of space to fill, and I look forward to picking and grouping, framing and hanging. I don't suffer the delusion that Ben will share all my interests and pleasures, so it won't surprise (or, I hope, disappoint) me if he isn't eager to memorize all the names and faces, if he doesn't find them the comfort I always did. But there's a (silly? superstitious?) part of me that feels that the people in those pictures want to watch over us, want to get a look at my kid growing up, and that I somehow wouldn't be doing right by my ancestors if I didn't festoon the place with their faces.

(Andy's paternal grandparents Etta and Bernard, my mother Betsy in my grandmother Helen's arms with my aunt Sylvia, Andy's uncle Bob and mother Kath, my aunts Nina and Elaine with my dad Stanley)

Refugees

The first time it happened -- at least, the first time I remember it happening -- I was walking from Target back to the car with Ben in my arms. He was heavy enough (this kid got big fast, so he was probably still a newborn) that I could feel the strain in my arms, and a horrible thought arrived unbidden: what would it be like to have to to carry this baby on some kind of forced march? I didn't necessarily have a specific forced march in mind; the image was just vaguely war-torn and desperate, a bit sepia-toned and European, as opposed to vivid and African, for instance.

Then it started happening more often. Practically every time I was out in public with Ben and had to lug him for some uncomfortable distance rather than bang him in the stroller, I'd have the flash of fear and desperation, feeling suddenly, unaccountably, like a refugee. I made a conscious effort not to dwell on these images. They would arrive, I'd do my best to have the feeling and allow myself a moment to reflect: on the weirdness of this recurrent fantasy, on the depth of my new appreciation for what it must be like to suffer big hardships with a baby -- and then let it go.

I also tried, though I wasn't consciously aware of it, I don't think, to steer these fantasies away from their obvious destination. The recurrent thoughts of being a refugee were bad enough; I did not want to start thinking about the Holocaust. But eventually it happened. And what's worse is that we managed to move on, in these awful thoughts, from the forced march to the horrors that succeeded it, which are frankly too upsetting even to name.

I don't know what's bringing this on. I'm not obsessed; I don't have these thoughts even every day. But I do have them, and they are brutal, and I wish I knew why. The silly side of my psyche suggests a scarring former life, but my rational mind doesn't accept that, and my heart doesn't find it a satisfying enough explanation. I have to assume it will eventually stop. In the meantime, I do my best both to keep from dwelling on these thoughts and to honor the memories they represent by not banishing them as entirely foolish, either.