To the Pictures of Me in Strangers' Houses

I am probably not on the mantle--those are the formal pictures, weddings, graduations, paid portraits. I’m probably not hanging in the hallway with the grade school 8 x 10’s and the last picture of your grandmother.

Who's the guy behind my son?

Maybe on the fridge, the side of the fridge, covered by a flyer from school. A picture of your son and his friend at the pool two summers ago. That’s me, in the background, in the blue swimsuit.

Maybe in a box at the top of the hall closet. I’m here with your great Aunt Lena, who taught school for 43 years. When you visit her, she takes you on historic tours of the town, giving you history lessons she thinks you need and love. You take a picture of her on the front steps of the court house. That’s me, in the red shorts to the right. I’m 7. I have no idea what I’m doing at the courthouse.

My brother and I, but who are the women?

Maybe I just come up on your laptop screensaver, when you uploaded all your pictures off your camera, finally out of space. The 4th of July party, the day at the farmer’s market, the lawn seats for the Dave Matthews concert at Blossom. You are younger than I and live a whole different life. That’s me, sitting on the quilt at the concert. Everyone else is standing. Two seconds after you took that shot, I stand up, though I think the music is too loud.

How many pictures of ourselves are in strangers’ houses? We stand behind cousins, now dead, unaware someone is taking the shot. Or we try to move out of the frame but it’s too late. We are stacked in between the birth of the second and third child. We are cropped out for scrapbooks.

Maybe we end up in flea markets, a box marked “5 for $1”. Old photographs. The day at the Statue of Liberty. Four generations standing in front. A guy wonders what the story was here, who these people are. He buys it, takes it to his study in his home in Enid, Oklahoma. He writes the story and gets all the details wrong. Except the color of my dress, the way my mother holds her hand on my shoulder.