Memories Have Holes
Holes and shadows
Going through pictures with my son and daughter-in-law, I came across a picture with a hole.
“Look at this,” I said. “My dad is cut out of the picture.”
But that wasn’t the first thing I thought. What struck me instead, I didn’t know I had a picture of the doll—the doll they buried with my sister. Renée died four days after this picture was taken.
I had written about that misty memory in one of my Door essays, “The Duck and the Doll,” an inchoate creative writing assignment for a class at DTS (Dallas Seminary).
Stunned to see a picture of Renée holding the doll she had received for Christmas from my mom and dad, it reignited my feelings of shame and regret, reminding me I had asked to keep that doll after she died. That same Christmas I had gotten an empty cradle––no doll.
A wistful feeling swept over me seeing that my dad’s face was missing from that black and white image. He died too, three months later. It would have been the only picture I have of the four of us together before they died: my mom, my dad, Renee, and me.
I have no idea where that picture is today. SIGH.
My mother repeatedly said she hated pictures. Few of her photos have ended up in my possession—these timeless, ageless mementos that root us to a reality lived in moments passing, changing like a river flows.
“A man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not same man.”
Moments of Reflection
It made sense to think that my mom cut my dad out of the picture. They were separated when he died.
When my daughter-in-law held the picture in her hand to examine it, she said, “My mom cut my dad out of pictures after their divorce.”
“Who knows why?” I added. “Maybe Mom was mad at him after Renée died.”
Still the picture itself bore evidence to the memory’s tentacles that caused me to swallow hard and resist the force of tears. Keep sorting these markers of the past, I told myself.
Forget about the doll. Forget about the duck. Forget about the dad.
The next morning, on our way home, my husband and I pulled into a Sonic in Amarillo. Thinking about the crate full of pictures I had taken to put in Creative Memories albums, a realization descended like a dew-laden mist, slowly at first before drenching me.
“I cut the picture.”
My husband said, “What are you talking about?”
“Now I recall a gold-plated locket that I wore. I don’t remember who gave me the locket or when, but it’s coming back to me. That locket. Holding it. Wearing it. I cut out the picture of my dad’s face and put it in that locket!”
“That makes sense.”
Yes, the sharp angles of the cuts in the picture—I must have used a knife instead of scissors—imprecise cuts yet a crudely heart-shaped piece had revealed a tiny image of my dad, who I thought so handsome. Then I had wedged a piece of my history into a cheap locket.
On the back of the picture with the missing daddy, my mother wrote, “Gone so soon!”
And I think, Gone for so long.
Ancestry, Old Pictures, and Who Made You?
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean––
The one . . .”
Not a grasshopper but similar to “Praying” Mantis [I took this picture at Carlsbad Caverns] Mantis meaning: slow down; be present; be mindful; reflect
One and only you! Unique down to your fingerprints, your DNA contains all “the genetic instructions” to make you, identifying familial connections.
Still, it’s easy to overlook or forget the miracle of how each and every person owes their existence to the exact combination of genes from their biological parents.
There’s no one like you. Never was. Never will be.
