Monday – Catching Her Good Side
Jul. 19th, 2010 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermore.
.
.
I recently joined a Facebook group for descendants of a set of my great, great, great grandparents (I think I got all the greats in there, at least) and too my delight came across a group photo that included my then 2-year-old mother sitting on the lap of her maternal grandfather. My mother was born in 1933 during the Great Depression. Not a lot of money was spent on luxuries like cameras and film during that era, so pictures of her as a child are a rare find for me.
One thing that I’ve noticed about almost all the photos I’ve seen of her as a child feature her standing or sitting with her left side facing the camera. In a lot of them she is in three-quarters profile, standing or with her body at that angle (in a few with her face turned toward the camera). In the pictures of her as a toddler, she is always looking off to the right, as if someone outside of the frame of the photo were standing in that direction calling her name to keep her from turning toward the photographer.
In the photo below, which features all of grandchildren of the couple taken on their 50th wedding aniversary, she is almost the only child not facing the camera. A casual observer would think this is a case of a squirmy toddler not cooperating, but I suspect it was very deliberate. They didn’t want to ruin the picture by showing her right side, so they made a point to hide the hand wasn’t there.
As my mother grew older, hiding her missing hand from cameras became instinctive for her. When she got old enough that she could be trusted to face the camera without showing what she wasn’t supposed to show, she tucked her right arm in the folds of her pleated skirts, or hid it behind her body. The youngest picture I’ve seen of her with the missing hand showing was taken when she was about 11. In that picture she has her arms wrapped around her little brother and sister, who were toddlers, and for the first time on film you can see the wrist on her right side that is only a wrist and nothing more.
It doesn’t appear in a picture again that I know of until her wedding day in 1956, when the photographer caught her coming outside of the door to the chapel; she was throwing up her arms to fend off an onslaught of rice being tossed at her and my father. I love that picture. She is laughing, so ecstatically happy and hopeful that she forgot to hide what wasn’t there. I remember her frowning at that picture: she didn’t like it as much as her wedding photos where her wrist is hidden beneath her bouquet or in the folds of her skirt where she had always been told to put it.
The funny thing is, I don’t recall her ever being embarrassed by what wasn’t there in real life. She was an extrovert who never met a stranger, and who easily struck up conversations with whoever she happened to be standing next to. She only hid her right side from cameras. Maybe it was because the message to do so was instilled in her from such a tender age that she never questioned it. Or maybe the sight of it in a picture displeased her because without her personality to overshadow it, she worried her physical deformity became what people would notice about her and remember her for. Perhaps she didn’t want people to be distracted by something that was just a fluke; it was something she had (or rather, didn’t have), but it wasn’t who she was. There was so much to her; I can see why she didn't want people to focus of what was missing.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
.
.
I recently joined a Facebook group for descendants of a set of my great, great, great grandparents (I think I got all the greats in there, at least) and too my delight came across a group photo that included my then 2-year-old mother sitting on the lap of her maternal grandfather. My mother was born in 1933 during the Great Depression. Not a lot of money was spent on luxuries like cameras and film during that era, so pictures of her as a child are a rare find for me.
One thing that I’ve noticed about almost all the photos I’ve seen of her as a child feature her standing or sitting with her left side facing the camera. In a lot of them she is in three-quarters profile, standing or with her body at that angle (in a few with her face turned toward the camera). In the pictures of her as a toddler, she is always looking off to the right, as if someone outside of the frame of the photo were standing in that direction calling her name to keep her from turning toward the photographer.
In the photo below, which features all of grandchildren of the couple taken on their 50th wedding aniversary, she is almost the only child not facing the camera. A casual observer would think this is a case of a squirmy toddler not cooperating, but I suspect it was very deliberate. They didn’t want to ruin the picture by showing her right side, so they made a point to hide the hand wasn’t there.
As my mother grew older, hiding her missing hand from cameras became instinctive for her. When she got old enough that she could be trusted to face the camera without showing what she wasn’t supposed to show, she tucked her right arm in the folds of her pleated skirts, or hid it behind her body. The youngest picture I’ve seen of her with the missing hand showing was taken when she was about 11. In that picture she has her arms wrapped around her little brother and sister, who were toddlers, and for the first time on film you can see the wrist on her right side that is only a wrist and nothing more.
It doesn’t appear in a picture again that I know of until her wedding day in 1956, when the photographer caught her coming outside of the door to the chapel; she was throwing up her arms to fend off an onslaught of rice being tossed at her and my father. I love that picture. She is laughing, so ecstatically happy and hopeful that she forgot to hide what wasn’t there. I remember her frowning at that picture: she didn’t like it as much as her wedding photos where her wrist is hidden beneath her bouquet or in the folds of her skirt where she had always been told to put it.
The funny thing is, I don’t recall her ever being embarrassed by what wasn’t there in real life. She was an extrovert who never met a stranger, and who easily struck up conversations with whoever she happened to be standing next to. She only hid her right side from cameras. Maybe it was because the message to do so was instilled in her from such a tender age that she never questioned it. Or maybe the sight of it in a picture displeased her because without her personality to overshadow it, she worried her physical deformity became what people would notice about her and remember her for. Perhaps she didn’t want people to be distracted by something that was just a fluke; it was something she had (or rather, didn’t have), but it wasn’t who she was. There was so much to her; I can see why she didn't want people to focus of what was missing.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-20 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-21 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-22 08:29 pm (UTC)