“This is a candid photo,” my mom said when she handed me this photograph. As if I couldn’t tell with all the men not looking at the camera, while the women do. “Look at those heels!” she laughed and pointed at the stilettoes on my great-grandmother, her grandmother.
It was Easter. My mom’s younger sister, the one who would go on to a hard life of abusive men and self-defeat and ultimately, estrangement from my mom, is blonde bobbed and carrying an impressively filled basket. My mom’s father, my grandpa with whom I never had a genuine conversation, is young and handsome. He seems tall next to his daughter, but he was not a big man. The woman who stands against the house always kept a distance. She is my mom’s mother, all of nineteen years old maybe, and saddled down with two kids she is not ready for.
I don’t know who the man in the foreground is. An uncle? A family friend? I’m guessing it was my great-grandmother’s husband at the time. She had a few that didn’t work out before the last one. I never knew him, either, but something about him was different. His pictures were still in the house. His last name was still hers. He’d only left, because he’d died, and maybe not even then.
My great-grandmother could cook a huge meal in stilettos with a baby on her hip and a song on her breath, nary a hair out of place or a smudge of lipstick on her teeth. I have not inherited this kind of poise. No one ever heard her curse, and she did not appear to have any outward vices. Despite this, everyone loved her.
She grew up on a farm where heels and pretty dresses were a mythic extravagance. She reared her children poor - not poorly, but poor. She was a good mother who didn’t have much besides her love to give.
My favorite story is of how she once ran on foot with her child to the nearest hospital. It was the middle of the night; the baby had ingested rat poison. He didn’t live. I don’t know what happened the next day other than her feet and her heart hurt. She made breakfast for the family and soldiered on.
I hope I have inherited this kind of poise.
