Meanwhile, in Devon

[andrewducker]

Seven days ago my father descended upon his mother's house, mob-handed with uncles and aunts and assorted of the grandchildren. She is gone, and the house must be prepared for sale - scrubbed clean of 20 years of life and a lifetime of memories and then sent out into the world, made safe for those who do not want a history, just a home.

This weekend, in Devon, I have escaped to the parents, the dog and the occasional sibling (both actual and by-law). We walk and talk of nothing in particular, catching up on goings-on and chatting of the inconsequential. We play silly cardgames and fractionally less silly boardgames, exchange late christmas presents and eat nice food.

This evening, after we eat, my father pulls a photo from the shelf behind him - him, as a child, on the beach with my grandfather I never met and my uncle I have. We ooh and aah over this frozen portrait of two young children, playing in the sand while Nazis ran riot across Europe. The world seems strangely close to me, yet entirely unknowable.

He pulls a box out - photos salvaged from the house. We rummage through - a person recognised here, a date examined there. We piece together stories and elicit explanations, descriptions and half-remembered stories. Half-brothers and fiancees, faces that mean so much and faces that mean nothing. We want to index and annotate - piece together some truth from all of it. I fight the urge, preferring my past to remain illusory - something that happened to other people, not myself. Let these stories be vague fantasies, not true things that show how we can all change so much over our life.

I watch myself do this, amused by my own denial, and eventually the story I tell myself works itself into words, which force me to a keyboard. And so I write them out, hoping that they will no longer be in my head and I can return to the games and the fripperies of conversation. But I know that they will continue to haunt me, long after my finger pauses over the button marked 'post'.

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

There's a photo I've seen of my Dad, aged about 13, on a beach in Poland.

The strange thing is that he looks -exactly- like I did when I was 13.

Exactly.

It's weird

[rainstorm.livejournal.com]

My dad as a young man looks like my cousin. Very strange. I never thought dad looked much like the rest of my family but he sort of does once you know what to look for.


And, as you know, I look exactly like my mother.

[opusfluke.livejournal.com]

Since before I was born my father has had a beard. In aid of the tsunami appeal this beard is about to go. My mother has forgotten what he looked like without a beard. The one photo of him without a beard as a man rather than as a child is lost. I have a beard and have had since I was 18, 12 years ago. Soon I will know what I shall look like in about 40 years time if I live that long and shave.
I still hope that since my conception was at a wild Samhain party i tis house in '73 when Mumsy was very drunk he may not be my "real dad". Given the looks I have to ask Alan Moore and Bill Bailey what they were doing at the time in question.
Lady Beloved Supervixen ha photos of a girl who stands as she does and looks as she did aged *8* and sane girl at *16*. No idea who she is except she is a blood relative circa four or more generations back. I do not mean "looks like", I mean "clone": stance, eyes, turn of feature, even the vibe is my Beloved. When she sees the pictures she feels sick/intrigued. How much "me" is genes, how much experience, how much X? As her lover for over a decade I would swear Lady X in those two pictures is Lady Supervixen except for clues of history in the dress.
Time, like space, is a poorly comprehended concept.

[moniqueleigh]

I can relate a bit to your Lady's "clone" story, although I know my "Lady X." My mum recently found a photo in her mum's collection. Her immediate reaction was to ask, "Mother, when was this picture of my daughter taken? I don't remember it." It wasn't me. It was my grandmother. None of us had noticed it before, but apparently when standing, I hold myself exactly like she does & I look much more like her than we thought.... Weeeeeeeeird.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Oddly this is exactly what my father is doing right now with our family photos too. But I am not much in the mood for the past right now and successfully dissuaded him from geting out his box, this time...

Denial is of course your family's middle name from the sound of it :-) (Andrew Denial Ducker. better than Jason certainly..)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

The first time my mum saw me when I hadn't dyed my hair (so it was a grey and very short) she looked at me very strangely on and off all day and said I looked just like her dad. (except he had a Stalin-like moustache - mine isn't so impressive :-) )