Photo

This assignment was a helpful reminder that I need to learn more about my parent's histories but given that there are only a couple of hours before class and they are in a different time zone I will write instead about what I do know. As always my affinity is for the small things. Every so often an old family photo that I have never seen before will appear around our house. When it does I am galvanized to search for more and everytime I am told that the rest are in storage, in some box, in some loft, in an uncle or grandparent's house.

There is a photograph in my room of a white rowing boat out in the ocean. There are five people in the hull. My father is rowing while my cousin (Lily), my older brother (Nick) and I all face forwards. My oldest brother, Soir, is looking backwards. All of us kids, apart form my backwards facing brother, are wearing life jackets. I remember those life jackets seemed to soak up the oceans salt and scathe my skin every time I was made to put one on. My little hand clings tightly to the edge of the boat.

I can imagine my grandma standing shakily on the dry rocks at the edge of the water, too wise to approach the black rocks we'd been warned to crawl across, clutching a camera with the strap tightened firmly around her wrist. Her voice would have been loud enough then to attract our attention but we are all starting at the water. She must have held that moment silently. 

An hour before Nick and I had probably been arguing. Lily and her father were most likely unpacking in their room. Soir, just four years older than me, was reading, already reaching a point where he began to feel the weight of something that would isolate him for several years to come. My dad would have been in the kitchen, sweat on his forehead, trying to mediate between his mother and his older brother.

An hour after this photo we would have been on the ride home, a journey so familiar that as soon as I learnt to drive I instinctually knew without knowing any of the street names or auto routes. The rocky, dirt trail that lead from the road to the water would turn out to be much harder to navigate than I could have guess as a 8 year old, feeling sick in the backseat, too small to ride up front.