Capturing the Past

This is a picture of my brother and my brother and myself on our 6th or 7th birthday. The first thing you will notice is that we are dressed mainly the same with the exception of the shorts, my brother's shorts being red, and mine blue. The second is that we are both reading a birthday card, most likely from the same person, as our parents always thought it prudent that we should open presents from the same benefactor at the same time so as to avoid jealousy. This is perhaps the very beginning of the present opening as it seems that none of the presents have been torn into and no wrapping paper is strown hap-hazardly on the ground for the small baby in the back ground, most likely my new-born cousin at the time, Mariel (You will no doubt notice her as the small pink ball in the background focused on something off camera). On the coffee table with the presents is an old, white cordless phone. Behind my brother is an old-fashioned fire place that came out of an old in that was used to build our house in the late 1920's. On the mantle are several old photographs of family members including one of my brother. Stylish old drapes cover a window in front of which sits an even older blue chair with a stylish throw on the back engraved with the letter S. A picture of some scene I cannot make out hangs on the wall next to the chair. In the dining room, the room that can be viewed over my shoulders, you will notice an abundance of plants as well as the same stylish old drapes. Blocked form view of the camera by myself, and most likely trying to appease her newborn daughter is, I bleieve, my aunt Cathie. It is a simple picture taken in a simple time when all I really had to worry about was when the next batch of presents would be coming.

First Memory

The first thing that I can truly remember comes to me perhaps because I felt, even then, at the beginning of my life, that I was witness to a powerfully emotional moment for those who I knew were closest to me. I too, then, was struck by this defining moment of life.
My parents, brother, and I along with an older man I knew only slightly, who would later become my grandfather, stood around a large bed in a white room. Dark colored furniture was scattered throughout the room, and I remember wondering why the bed was metal rather than wood like the rest of the room. I remeber sitting in my mother's lap as she looked lovingly at the person in the bed, who I would later learn was my grandmother. I remember that she wore a torquoise cap, though at the time I did not know the color. The cap hid the fact that she no longer had any hair.
In many ways I can only remember the few happy moments in an otherwise sad day. What I did not know was that this was the last time I would see my grandmother alive. Perhaps it is strange that my first memory is plagued with sadness, but I look at it in a different light, as the only chance that I would really have to remember my mother's mother, and it is a gift that I would never give up.