Stories Never Told in Words

"Life is a journey; photography is thy shepherd." (Destin Sparks)

On my Facebook page I have certain things I do on different days of the week. Mailbag Tuesday. Shaker Wednesday. Sunday morning coming down when I give my Facebook friends a glimps of the world I see outside my window. Friday, I do my best to post smiles all day long. And Thursday is Throwback Day when I, along with many others on Facebook, post old photos. That has me looking back through old photo books and snapping pictures of pictures. The one above is from my mother's first photo album. That photo album is about the size of one of the bigger paperback books and has a wooden cover attached together with leather strips. The front cover has a piece broken off it. It's been that way ever since I can remember. 

In the album, Mom has attached the pictures to the pages with those black corners. She has photos of her dating days with Dad and also shots posed with other friends from when she was in school. It's a stroll down her memory lane. Those are memories she has lost now, but there in her photo album, they live on in the pictures and in the notes she wrote under the photos. 

This picture is my dad, years before he met Mom. He was 21 years old and had ridden his motorcycle all the way across country to Oregon to visit cousins there. Mom would have been 11 or 12 when this photo was taken since she was almost ten years younger than Dad. She didn't meet him until she was 18 and he was 28. They met when he was on a date with a friend and she was with a different fellow. She used to say that she took one look at Dad and knew he was the man she was going to marry. I don't know how long it took her to convince Dad of that, but they did start dating right away. And they did get married the day after she graduated from high school. 

"Look at the people in the very old photographs! They are gone forever but they still can give us messages with their eyes, they still can touch our hearts with their looks and they still can give us courage with their standing upright!" (Mehmet Murat ildan)

I look at Dad in this picture and I see a young man I never knew. A man willing to take off across the country with a map and a little money in his pockets in spite of his mother in tears begging him not to go. He went. He slept on the ground, shivered in the cold, sweated in the heat, and made it to Oregon. It was a highlight of his life and I wish I had asked him more questions about that journey. It was a journey off the farm and toward independence. He came back to the farm after his summer in the west, but I daresay he was never the same boy who rode away on that motorcycle. 

There are things that I can never know about how my parents were when they were young, but I can see glimpses of them in those old pictures and imagine how it might have been for them. I'm sure it is the same for my children. Stories never told in words, but only glimpsed in a face staring out of a photo.
  
"When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure."

Do you have treasured photos that make you remember? 

Do you wish you'd taken more time to talk about back when with your parents and grandparents before it was too late?

Dad - Before and After Me

Happy Father's Day to all of you - those who are dads and those of us who have dads. There's nothing like a dad, but it's also true that our dads weren't always dads. They used to be boys and then young men looking to the future, trying out their wings, finding their independence. This picture is my dad on his motorcycle long before he became my dad. The year was about 1931 and he was getting ready to take off across America all the way to Oregon.

What a way to see the country! What a way to say I'm ready to be on my own now. His mother wasn't happy with him. I've never heard anybody say what his father thought. Maybe that he wouldn't make it. That he'd turn around and come home before he got a hundred miles down the road. Or maybe he was proud of him for wanting to do something a little daring. Or he might have been worried he'd never come home. Lucky for me, Dad did come home and meet my mom some eight or nine years later. 

But that trip was Dad saying I'm old enough now to do what I want. His parents weren't happy about it, but he went anyway. All the way across country on a motorcycle. I've always thought I got my grab hold of a dream or goal and keep on keeping on spirit from my mom, a very determined woman. But now that I think about my dad and this trip, I'm seeing he had plenty of that perseverance and focus too. He wanted to go, so he did. And all his life, it was something he looked back on with pleasure and pride. Riding by the Grand Canyon. Nearly running out of water in the desert. Eating nothing but cantalope for a couple of days because someone was selling them cheap by the side of the road. So many adventures.

I look at the young man in the photo above. That was before I was even a thought he might imagine. He was young, footloose and fancy free and he took advantage of that.

Years later when he was almost forty, I came into his life. His last child after two other daughters. I remember the motorcycle. It sat in the corner of the garage for all my childhood years. Dad didn't ride it. I think it needed repair. But he kept it for many years. A symbol of freedom. Of independence. He finally sold it and I think regretted the sale almost immediately.

I can't imagine what it must have felt like for a farm boy like Dad who had probably never gone farther than Louisville (about 60 miles from here) to just take off. To shut his ears to his mother's pleading for him to give up such craziness. My mother remembers Dad saying his mother even offered to give him money she'd hid away for a rainy day if he would stay home. In her heart it was storming for sure.

Now I wish I could hear more of Dad's stories about the places he went on that motorcycle. I wish I knew the Dad before there was me. And I wonder if my children ever wonder about the girl before the mom. I think that's sort of what we all want - for our loved ones to see us as we see ourselves. Unique, one of a kind, our own person. 

That's what writers need to do with our characters too. To know them is to breathe life into them. And some of them are fathers. Like Victor in Angel Sister. Victor was a yearning to be better father in spite of his flaws and troubles.

My dad wasn't perfect either. But then who among us is? But he was a good dad and he surprised some people by buying a motorcycle and heading west. Maybe himself most of all.

Hope you had a good dad who made your life richer and better. What's one of your favorite things or memories about your dad?