My Family Photo

Whitefish Lake Family Photograph

Though I painted a sadly superficial smile on my face for the black point-and-shoot Olympus camera timer as my dad jogged down the dock to join my mom, Heather, my sister, Lauren, and I, I was unbelievably upset to be required in this photograph. Having had a terrible morning, I just wanted to mope around in the moist grass and read my mystery novel. I had checked out ten mystery novels from the Livingston Library for each of the ten days my family was lake lounging up in the northern part of Montana. I remember that the librarian behind the desk with her short gray bob had laughed lightly. I remember my obsession with this woman's hair. I cannot remember what the pin on her blouse said under the all-caps LIBRARIAN, or what I called her, but I used to visit her every two weeks when my books were due. While she would scan the barcodes of my newly selected books with her red-light pen, I watched the perfection of the silver strings that hung around her face reflecting sunlight, and I felt obligated to count every single strand.

Back to the photograph...
My dad, just barely crouched down behind me in time for the flash flash flash of the camera warning the onset of the shutter, is smiling, pleased to have wrangled me down to the end of the dock to appease my mom's desire for a family photograph. My sister holds her chin in her palm in almost the same manner as me. Hers however displays her face a bit more. I remember attempting to cover my face to mask my displeasure. Later my dad apologized to me for forcing me to be in the photograph.

You may have noticed my sister's shortly cropped hair and her lack of a top or female bathing suit for that matter. Lauren spent several years of her childhood in this manner until she couldn't get away with it anymore. She was the most radical tomboy I knew. She howled at dresses and relished romping with boys. On the day that we were flower girls for a wedding she kindly informed my mom that she would not wear a dress again until the day she was married.

My swimsuit in the photo is, however, a full one-piece. The material had the pattern of red, orange, pink, and purple flames. The fabric of the red flames were more dense than that of the orange flames, the orange fabric more dense than the pink, the pink more than the purple. The varying densities of the fabrics caused exciting tan lines on my torso. I loved being painted by flames every summer. I hated the day that I no longer fit into that swimsuit.

My mom bought her black two-piece swimsuit at Bob Wards before they moved out to 19th. She was self conscious of her body, worried about how her stomach hung out over the bottoms (comical to me now, knowing that she had been a professional ballerina at the Portland Ballet Company for eight years). She is quite thin in the photo.

My dad still owns the black trunks he is sporting in the photo. I believe he purchased both his necklace and sunglasses while on a trip to Colorado with his buddies. He has one arm on each of us. His left arm rests on Lauren, the younger by two years.

Note the tilt of the horizon. The water is not completely calm. The sun is high, and the towels are from New Mexico. My hair is likely more than ten times as long as Lauren's.