Family Portrait This photograph was taken in 1958, in the good old days. At times I wish it was in color, for the family certainly was a colorful group. Then again, our lives were so much simpler then. Black and white, you might say. So it's rather appropriate after all. Mama is the tall, slim lady standing behind the two seated men. Her eyes were a fine soft brown. Parker eyes, Granddaddy used to say, as his eyes were the same. Only one of us children inherited those lovely eyes. Unfortunately it wasn't me. The gentle smile on Mama's face is a deception. She had a will of galvanized steel. Her word, no matter how softly uttered, was absolute law. Her mind, once made up, was set in cement. She was devoutly Christian. As far back as any of us could remember she made twice-weekly pilgrimages to one or another charitable benefit, dispensing whatever she deemed necessary, whether food, clothing, or understanding. She expected us to accompany her on these treks. At tender ages we washed dishes at the Salvation Army Soup Kitchen and sang hymns with orphans at the National Foundling Home. On holidays such as Christmas and Easter we carried little baskets filled with fruit and cookies as we followed Mama into Shantytown, a dismal clutch of cardboard shacks inhabited by poor folk who stuffed newspapers under their clothes in the winter. We heartily disliked those excursions. We moaned and groaned and protested until we were red in the face. Mama listened patiently, even smiled at our antics. But she wouldn't allow us to shirk our duty. "It's the Christian thing to do," she always said. That was her most oft-used phrase. We got so we could anticipate those words and mouthed them as she spoke. Of course, we never let her catch us doing it. It wasn't that we were wealthy philanthropists sharing our bounty with the less fortunate. Far from it. We were living in a state that could be romantically described as "genteel poverty." If not for Mama’s dressmaking skill, a shed full of chickens, and Granddaddy Parker's monthly veteran's pension, we might have been living in Shantytown ourselves. Mama had a talent for stretching meager resources to the limit. When we were old enough we were allowed to have part-time jobs and keep the money we earned, provided we remitted ten percent to Mama to help with expenses and another ten percent into a special jar marked, "Our Christian Charities." You'll notice my father isn't in this portrait. He had been gone for eight years when it was taken. It would be more precise to say he ran out on us but, innocents that we were, we didn't know it at the time. Mama never divulged the details of their separation to anyone. Maybe she wasn't sure herself why he decided to go away on the eve of the birth of his fifth child. Daddy's departure didn't change our lives to any marked degree. I guess we were just too young at the time to remember. Daddy went away, Granddaddy Parker arrived, Mama brought Baby home, life went on. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Mama was not by nature whimsical, but her covert fondness for the unusual surfaced in the names she chose for us. That's my older brother Stepford standing at her right. He was seventeen then, entering a dignified phase of his life as a high school senior. If you detect a hint of smug satisfaction in his bearing it's because his basketball team won the championship and he had received a trophy for scoring the most goals. The rest of us refused to let the glory go to his head. Around the house we called him Tug, though we knew he detested his nickname. When Stepford started dating he brought his girlfriend to dinner to meet the family. She was a silken blonde named Elizabeth-Anne and as she lived on the upwind side of the meat packing plant, we knew she was rich and came from a Founding Family. Stepford's one condition in allowing us to meet Elizabeth-Anne was that we must not call him by his nickname. We agreed to his request. However, no one told Granddaddy Parker about the important stipulation. The Big Dinner was going well. We had a white cloth on the table, everyone remembered to say please and thank-you, Mole chewed with his mouth closed, and Baby didn't hum to herself. Granddaddy nudged Stepford and said in a clear loud voice, "Pass the salt, Tug." Stepford's ears turned cherry red. Thinking Stepford hadn't heard him the first time, Granddaddy repeated the phrase. Elizabeth-Anne tossed her silken locks and giggled. The rest of us were frozen, staring in alarm at Stepford's stricken face. He looked like he wanted to melt into a puddle and seep into a crack in the floor. Then we discovered Elizabeth-Anne's amusement stemmed from simple delight. She owned that "Tug" sounded cute and regretted that no one in her house had a nickname. We decided to find a good name for her. Everyone spoke at once. Suggestions flew around the table like Mole's peas, thrown when Mama wasn't watching. No one agreed with anyone else's choice. Then Mama rose from her chair. This was a signal for us to be silent. Baby, being the youngest, was asked for her idea. Baby was missing her two front teeth at the time and spoke with a lisp. She declared, "We thould call her Thal." It was unanimously agreed that henceforth Elizabeth-Anne would be known as Sal. However, Baby's version, Thal, was what we actually called her. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ My older sister Lima is to the right of Stepford. Her stock reply to any observation was, "I know." We heard it so often we began to say it along with her. She always rewarded us with a long-suffering sigh. You couldn't tell her a thing she didn't already know. Moreover, it was true: she truly did "know it all." She received A’s with hardly an effort. Her handwriting was perfect. She did long division in her head. Lima could have been an atomic scientist or a brain surgeon. She wanted to be a movie star. She was pretty enough to be in the movies, as you can see from the photo. And talented enough. She took dance lessons, tap and ballet, and she was the only one in her class worthy of a solo routine in the spring recital. She was fifteen there, and her expression of aloof sophistication was the result of practicing before a mirror each night. There comes a time when a girl notices that a man, a real man as opposed to merely a relative, gives her an admiring second look. Lima confided to me that the baker's apprentice had given her just such a glance. Furthermore, she was positive he had winked at her. I was astonished. The baker's apprentice was an old fellow of at least eighteen! Lima pretended to feel indignation, but I know she was secretly pleased. The very next day she used all her savings to purchase a full-length mirror and hung it on the wall on her side of the room we shared. She then drew a line on the floor some three feet away, a line no one was permitted to cross. Lima spent much time polishing her mirror and stood before it posing and making faces like the models in Photoplay advertisements. She also spent hours practicing the forbidden art of lipstick application while she listened for Mama's step in the hallway. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Seated in the center of the picture are my two grandfathers, Granddaddy Parker and Grandpa Slade. They look like a pair of grouchy bears, don't they? Granddaddy Parker was in a grump because Mama had insisted he remove his cap for the portrait. He’d argued he felt naked without it. Mama countered that Grandpa Slade hadn't complained about removing his cap. "That's because he has hair on his head," Granddaddy had barked. Mama got her way. Granddaddy Parker gave his cap a mighty heave across the room and inadvertently knocked Grandpa Slade's model of HMS Victory off the hutch. The Victory had been painstakingly assembled on the previous twenty-nine evenings and was not yet glued together. Of course, it fell apart, demolished as if hit by a typhoon. That's why Grandpa Slade looks mean in the picture. Their belligerent postures, the way they are leaning away from each other with their heads slightly averted, wasn't due to Granddaddy Parker’s jealousy about the hair or that Grandpa Slade would have to work another twenty-nine evenings on his model. They weren't on speaking terms that day, anyway. They were in essence "not speaking" when they played gin rummy, when they played chess, when they shared the morning papers, even when they sat in the parlor after supper to listen to the radio. The only thing they did together was build cabinets. Grandpa Slade did the joining, Granddaddy Parker the finishing. Even then, the work was done in silence, each in his own corner of the shed. Grandpa Slade had come to live with us four years before this photo was taken, just after Grandma Slade's passing. Before he came, we had all but forgotten about him. Daddy's family lived far away and had seemed to vanish from our lives the same time he did. Our first indication of Grandpa Slade's existence came when a letter arrived at our door surprisingly addressed to Mama as Wynne Slade. We never learned what was in that letter, but I recall Mama had many discussions with Granddaddy Parker about it. I overheard Granddaddy grumbling about having an extra mouth to feed, not to mention he was the father of the no-good lout Mama had married. Mama reminded Granddaddy she would have no such talk in the house. "The man is alone and has no place else to go. He is after all the children's other grandfather. They are Slades, just as he is." Then came the words I knew she was going to say: "Besides, it's the Christian thing to do." Mama naturally won. Grandpa Slade arrived and became a member of the family. Granddaddy Parker continued to fuss and fret, but for the most part he suffered in silence. Disputes between the Grandfathers became the norm of things in our house. Mama patiently accepted them. We children looked on with tolerant, sometimes gleeful, amusement. We all knew it was a game played by two old men, a game we expected them to play. They never let us down. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ That's me on the left of Grandpa Slade, the girl with the scruffy braids and slouched shoulders. I was thirteen then, at the height of my Tomboy stage. With a nickname like Ricky, how could I be anything else? I could never wear a skirt for my shins were always bruised, or a short-sleeved blouse for my elbows were always scraped. I wasn't tall and athletic like Stepford, or pretty and clever like Lima. You can tell from the photo that I didn't fuss with myself in front of a mirror. I had mousy hair and a mousy face. But I smiled for the photographer. I guess smiling came naturally to me, despite my shortcomings. Things that bothered the others never bothered me. Lima was unhappy about being named after a type of bean. When I pointed out to her that Lima was also a city in Peru, she gave me her famous don't-you-know-anything look and said, "L-ee-ma is a city in Peru. L-eye-ma is a bean. I was named for a bean." Well, I was named Butterick, for a sewing pattern. I never complained, though, for it could have been much worse. Mama might have decided to name me Simplicity. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ We couldn't afford a television set those days. Not that we needed one. Our visual entertainment was provided by Moberley. He was eleven in the picture, the one with the goofy grin and the unmanageable cowlick. Moberley, or Mole as we called him, never walked anywhere. Instead, he bounced through a room doing handsprings or cartwheels, or he danced, performing slick parodies of Lima's tap routines. He could make us laugh until our eyes streamed and our sides ached, and he always had a ready joke, a silly expression. Mole had a serious side that often got him into trouble. He couldn't bear to see a caged bird. A sign on his wall proclaimed: Birds were given wings so they could fly. He once released Mrs. Barton's canary from it's little bamboo cage. She made him paint her fence when he couldn't come up with money to replace the bird. The experience didn't teach him a thing. He went on to open all the bird cages in the pet shop on Ash Street, but the proprietor discovered the scheme before any parakeets could venture into the world. The severe tongue-lashing Mole received for his prank did not alter his convictions. The Sunday before we posed for this picture we went for a picnic at a nearby park famous for its well-stocked aviary. Surely the sight of a hundred or more birds in one giant cage gnawed at Mole's sense of right, for suddenly he was inside the cage, whistling and flapping his arms, herding the birds to the open gate. He didn't emerge until they were all out of their prison, beating their wings in ecstasy against the wide blue sky. Despite the raucous melee he caused, he wasn't caught. Unfortunately, thirty-two of the escapees were captured and returned to the cage. Mole, however, considered his venture successful. I do believe that even as he grinned for the camera he was plotting his next mission of mercy. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ That's Baby sitting in front with the kitten in her lap. She was christened Rachel, the only one of us who had what we considered a normal first name. Maybe, as Lima once suggested, Mama had been too distracted by Daddy's departure to think clearly at the time so instead of trying for the unusual she chose the easy way by consulting her Bible. The "normal" name made no difference to us. We called her Baby, for the word suited her so well. She was such an angel. You can see she looked like one, too, with her fair curls and dimpled cheeks. Baby didn't care to learn the alphabet, nor was she interested in knowing the sum of two apples and two apples. Music was her first important love. Evenings she would sit raptly for hours in front of the radio, a faraway look in her eyes, a pat little smile on her face. The rest of us couldn't see what she was seeing, but we were sure it was something of rare beauty. Surprisingly, Baby didn't aspire to become a musician. She wanted to draw a comic strip for the Sunday paper. Every sheet of foolscap that entered the house ended up in a big box in her closet. She diligently measured and squared off the paper to resemble blocks on the comic pages. The characters that went into the blocks resembled our family. Whenever something important or unusual occurred, Baby would chronicle the event in her "funnies." The characters never spoke, for that involved the distasteful chore of printing, but Baby had such a knack for capturing expressions and portraying actions the viewer knew at once what was taking place. I think Mama saved every one of the comic pages Baby drew. I'll have to ask her about them. What fun it would be to all get together and go over that part of our lives. It would be like looking at this portrait and remembering those long-gone childhood days. I'll cherish them, and this portrait, forever. --Cat Dubie