I was at the post office the other day and I asked the blond-haired clerk wearing a mask, whether she had noticed an increase in postal service volume, like I’d heard from Christian. Yes, she said, people have nothing else to do, so they shop online, try clothes and return them, or elderly people find photos and mail them to their younger relatives. I don’t know what I was expecting as a response, but I hadn’t expected two detailed scenarios. People, sending pictures to each other? Huh. That isn’t happening in our family. What has happened instead, is that my sister scanned albums and albums worth of pictures and made them digitally available for everyone.
Pictures without interpreters are like coded messages. Looking through the pictures, you can organize years, subjects and events and grouping them together helps a little. My grandparents were married in 1953, for example, and their first child was born in 1954. Pictures in 1955 contain only one bald-headed baby and are easy to recognize compared to the pictures later when there are more bald-headed babies.
It’s delightful though when a message comes through. This happened when all the pictures for 1955 came together in a little pile and I was attempting to sort them from January to December, smaller baby to bigger baby, snow to snow. In the middle was summer, and a horse and the baby on the horse. I don’t know what the order of the pictures is, but for the sake of the story, I’ll assume it began with my grandpa taking a picture of my grandma holding the baby, Mary, on her hip on one side while a horse (I imagine it is chestnut coloured, white blaze and stockings) stands on her other side as she holds its lead. Grandma is wearing pants that are so big, I imagine she borrowed them from grandpa, for she’s rolled them up past her bare ankles.
In the next picture, the baby is on the horse, she’s grabbing for its mane, and grandpa is holding her calf, his middle finger and thumb almost touching. The lead is slack as he holds the end and smiles for the camera, shirt tucked-in, sleeves rolled up.
In the third picture, grandpa is mostly cropped out, because the viewer only sees the brim of his hat and his arms extended to support the baby.
The fourth picture is taken from the other side of the horse. The baby is looking at the camera and grandpa’s hands supporting her are hidden at this angle. The only thing he hasn’t managed to hide are his back and legs visible under the horse’s neck.
I think it’s a camera prank they made up. There in the warm weather and relaxed clothes, they have the leisure to imagine a silly scene with their new baby. There are my grandparents, and it makes me think of Joyce Carol Oates’ observation of her father in her memoir: “such playfulness suggests the youth of my father at this time, as it suggests the youth of the era…”.