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25. PICTURES (March 2003)
This
story's two beauties and an ugly.
I took a picture of my
mother Mildred to send to my Thai then-fiance (later, for a time, wife) Nudjarin.
But my mother wouldn't let me send it because Mom was shocked at how she looked.
She resented her picture, as does every human being who lives long enough, and
don't show me your plastic-surgery-perfect face of 80. It is still going to look
like hell at 110.
My Mom was beautiful when
she was young, movie-star beautiful, thick black hair, a lovely face. Now she's
in her 70's, with a widow's hump, white/gray hair, wrinkles, liver spots - and
she hates the image.
Yet my beautiful
then-30-year-old Thai wife also was unhappy with some photos I took of her. She
felt they showed age, and she was surprised and made unhappy by that fact,
although I thought she looked great. She actually looked younger than 30, more
like 25, 26. But she showed me a picture of herself when she was 20 and could
pass for 16 and I had to tell her honestly she couldn't pass for 16 anymore.
I showed her a passport
photo of myself from 1986 and, my, how I'd changed too. My hair so thick then
and dark. Now I wear a crewcut and the hair's mostly white. The wife was
surprised how much I'd changed in such a short time. I told her we live for the
Now and the promise of the future only, and we will not, must not, mourn the
past, but that was rot.
Three human beings
acciduously mourning the past, of course we do, every human being who ever grew
to adulthood, from the beauties to the monsters, brother and sister leaves,
floating too easily down.
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