Family album

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             d.s.

“God places the solitary in families,” comforting words from the Bible … families, by blood, by obligation, by necessity, by desire … and sometimes, if one is very lucky, by love. It is a word that implies solidity, a rock-solid foundation, a place to go home to … to grow out of … to grow away from, and yet to remember and hang onto … the echoes never leaving one's ears or one's heart, the memories carved like painted ivory, from a single tusk, delicately colored in brilliant hues, and softer ones, faded sometimes, so dim as to be almost forgotten … and yet never to be totally forgotten or left behind. The place where one begins, and hopes to end … the thing one works hard to build on one's own … the pieces like building blocks reaching high into the sky…. Family … what images that conjures … what memories … what dreams.

The sun was so brilliant nearly everyone was squinting, though it was only eleven o'clock in the morning. The tiniest of breezes ruffled the women's hair. The day was so beautiful there was a kind of agony to it, an amazing silence, and all one could hear in the silences were birds, a quiet chirping, a sudden shrieking, and the overwhelming smell of flowers … lily of the valley, gardenias, freesia, buried in a carpet of moss. But Ward Thayer saw none of it and he seemed to hear nothing at all. His eyes had been closed for several minutes, and when he opened them, he stared for the longest time, almost like a zombie, looking colorless, so unlike the image everyone had of him … had had for the last forty years. There was nothing dashing or exciting or even handsome about Ward Thayer this morning.

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