The Way You Were

I think that we honor ourselves by honoring our past.
-Unknown

There is always one member in each family who is the keeper of the family photos. My baby sister in Denver is that person in our family. While we were there for Thanksgiving she brought out all the family photos she had managed to hang on to through the years and we sat at her dinning room table perusing them. Some I remembered, some I had forgotten about, and some I had never seen before. Our older sister was with us and became a little upset when she realized that a lot of the photos were ones she did not have- like baby photos of herself, photos of our mother when she was young, and photos she had taken herself. I suggested that I take all the photos home and scan them into my computer and then have copies make from the digital images. I told her I wasn't sure how long it would take but that I would get copies of any photos she wanted to her. What I did not tell her was I was going to copy all the photos she herself had taken and as many of the photos of our mother as I could and then put them in a photo album and give the photo album to her for Christmas.

The above photo is one of the photos I copied and it shows my mother back in either Spring or Summer of 1968 when she was thirty-nine or forty years old. This I know because she is wearing both Ken Monfort and what looks like Hubert H Humphrey campaign buttons. Monfort was running for U.S Senate and Humphrey for U.S. President that year. If it is a Humphrey button then it would be Summer, sometime after Bobby Kennedy's assassination. The woman with her is Joy Boyd. She and her husband Joe were civil rights activists but since they both were African-Americans their involvement in the civil rights movement was more dangerous than my mother's involvement. This I learned the day Joy took us to her house.

The Boyd house was your basic brick 1950's ranch with a big picture window in the living room. When we stepped into the house we found Joy's daughter standing behind a ironing board ironing a blouse. I was surprised to see she was doing so with the living room drapes closed and all the living room lights on. I wondered why she didn't just open the drapes and iron in the sunlight but did not ask. I don't remember why we were there but I do remember that my baby sister, who was seven years old at the time, was with us. I also remember her getting bored and starting to play in the drapes; weaving in and out of them or just slipping between the shear curtains near the window and the heavier drapes behind. When Joy saw what she was doing she told her, in that voice grownups use when you are doing something wrong but they understand you don't know you are doing something wrong, to stay away from the window and out of the drapes because it wasn't a safe place to be. Then I understood why Joy's daughter was ironing with the lights on. Those drapes were never open because someone may try to shoot through the window.

But let's get back to the photo. I don't know who took this but I'd guess it was at some political event and from the size and feel of the original print by a photographer with one of the Denver newspapers. I love this photo because the clothes, the hair styles, and the jewelry so evoke the Sixties for me. Both of them look so happy, comfortable being with each other, and stylish in their big sunglasses. From the way Joy is looking at my mother I am sure my mother just said something that cracked them both up. I see my mother is wearing her wedding ring, a ring she wore even after my father died. She just switched it to her other hand. I am surprised to see she is wearing a bracelet as she hardly did so since her hand and wrist were so small most bracelets just fell off when she pointed her hand toward the floor. She must have been very happy when she found that bracelet.

This is one of my favorite photos of my mother because it captures her in a way most do not since she was never comfortable getting her photo taken. I think this may be the reason why the photographer gave her a copy since it captures a moment of truth. Neither knew they were being photographed and we are seeing them as they really were at that moment. Looking at it fills me with happiness.