Little Me
I was going through some old photo albums recently and decided I would scan some of them to post on Flickr and keep a copy on my hard drive as backups in case anything ever happens to the photo albums. Most likely tragedy will never strike, but you never know, and I would hate to lose all those pictures.
So anyway, I was finding lots of pictures to scan- pictures of the kids when they were young, pictures of me and my siblings when we were young, pictures I’ve taken, and pictures others have taken of me. I came across an envelope of pictures that had been with my Dad’s belongings. Most of the pictures were duplicates of ones my Mom has- pictures I’ve seen over the years. But one of them I had never seen before finding it with my Dad’s belongings a few years ago. I pulled it out to look at it once again. It’s a younger, blonder version of me, a little me, sitting on a boulder, arms folded across my chest, looking directly at my Dad taking the picture, standing at the base of the rock. I look at it now and I can’t help but wonder what must have been going through my mind as I sat there having my picture taken by my Dad. From the looks of it, I’d guess it was taken right around the time my Dad took off to chase his dreams of living in Alaska. It might possibly have been on one of his first trips back to visit us. Either way, my guess is I was thinking that maybe if I was good, he’d stay. If I wished it enough, it would happen. Truth of the matter is, no matter how much I wished for it, no matter how much I willed it to happen, it was never enough to make my wishes come true. Believe me, I tried. All my life, I’ve thought how much we missed out on by not having him around, by not getting to see him more than once every few years, and even then for only a day or two at a time… maybe a week if we were lucky. I’ve felt like my Mom and us 4 kids got the short end of the stick. But right now, looking through the photo albums, remembering all the highlights of our lives, I’m thinking that it wasn’t us who got the short end of the stick- it was my Dad. Because of the choices he made, the life he chose to live, he missed out on seeing 4 beautiful kids grow in to wonderful adults. He missed all of our high school graduations, he missed out on all of our weddings, he wasn’t around when his grandkids were born, was not even around when his great-grandkids were born. I wish he would have been there to enjoy those moments with us, but for whatever reason, he chose not to. One person who has been there for each of us, through all of life’s events, great and small… is my Mom. Thank you Mom, for always being there for us. You are loved and appreciated more than you’ll ever know.
Little Betty Jeanette sitting on the hood of the family car.
