My Most Important Picture

I think it's hard to truly define a superlative in any part of my life because I see things as a gradient--just one long haul without any real start or end. However, to put things in more manageable terms, I can definitively say that my parents' wedding photograph means something to me. This "something" is not easy to pin down for it is neither a simple good or bad, but rather it just is. The photograph itself is aged and yellowed from too much sun exposure. My mother is smothered in yards and yards of laced fabric that grow from her head and drown her body. My father is about 30 pounds lighter than he is now yet his thick black horn rimmed glasses are still the same. Both are smiling, as they should, for the camera, and their hands are placed, as they should, on each other in the most civil manner possible. Their smiles are docile and their entire composure reminds me of 19th century portrait photography--oh so posed and meant to last an eternity.

The two things that make this particular photograph more than just any typical wedding photo is that firstly, it has my father in it. For the past 19 years of my life, my father has always been the photographer in every situation and circumstance whether it is vacations or celebrations etc. He hides behind his cameras, intent on documenting everyone around him to remember, but in the process he becomes excluded. In this photograph, we are able to see him in the rare circumstance where he is the subject matter.

Secondly, the slightly too big photograph is taped to the front of a crystal picture frame that I assume was a wedding gift. The lack of effort along with the tacky frame seems almost apathetically heavy handed. This singular action tells so much about my parents and the dichotomy I feel between them and myself. Tradition, conservative values, my family heritage, and pure lack of understanding wrapped into one "meaning"ful commodity.