When I was 20 and in my second year of college,
this is how I assessed the previous two decades. I was currently in college and
before that, I was in high school, which didn’t go by too quickly. Prior to
that, I was in Catholic school for two years, which seemed like forever and in
public elementary school for seven years and before that I was doing nothing
for about five years and it all just seemed like a very long time. I figured I
had at least three more of that time frames ahead of me and if they all went as
slowly as the first 20-year span, I would be around for what would at least
seem, like forever. If I got a bonus 20 years or some part thereof, which I
fully expected, then all the better.
When I turned 25 I
refigured the numbers to conclude I had two more repeats of that time frame
plus a good chunk of a third one, if I played my cards right. I was in the army
at the time and time was passing like parade rest. Again, I was satisfied with
the way the numbers were panning out.
Around this time, an
acquaintance asked a favor of me. Rene, a barmaid at The Tiki Girls and a bit
of a vagabond, asked a favor.
“Could you hold on to
this picture for me? It’s the only picture I have of my two daughters and I
don’t want to lose it.”
I took the picture and
put it away in a safe place. A year or so later, she moved to San Luis Obispo
and I heard she got married. A short time after this, I was discharged from the
army and had to return to Rochester, New York on short notice. The Sergeant
Major I worked for stored my stuff in his garage. When I did return to
California the following year, it was to Long Beach, not San Pedro.
I knew a few people still
in San Pedro and would go back every now and then to see if anyone had heard
from Rene. No one had.
I met a California girl
in Long Beach and we were married in 1976. I was 30 years old and a lot of
stuff had happened in those 30 years and I figured I had a good shot at not one
but at least two more 30-year repeats of what, again, seemed like a slow moving
stretch.
We moved to the Outer
Banks and then to Virginia Beach. By 1986, we had three children, ages 6, 4,
and 2. I was 40 and believe me, a lot had happened in those forty years. It
seemed like a very long time and if I could somehow finagle doubling that and
stealing a few extra years I thought that would be very good, very good indeed.
Our family had a professional picture taken one time and it reminded me very
much of the picture of Rene’s two girls that were stored away in a
footlocker.
Surely, she could never
have forgotten the picture. And it wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t find me
and it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t find her but somehow it doesn’t seem
right that that picture is sitting in a footlocker in my attic.
This year I will turn 66
and I’m thinking in fractions now and not multiples. I think Rene might be in
her 70’s if she is still alive. She wasn’t taking good care of herself when I
knew her, but maybe her second marriage brought a little normalcy to her life.
The picture in my footlocker is over 40 years old which means the two girls are
almost twice as old as I was when Rene gave them to me for safe-keeping.
I tell myself that there
are probably other portraits of the girls. Still, the one in my attic is the
only first one.
How the hell does time
get away from us? So many things are repeated over and over, vacations after
vacations after vacations; soccer games and softball games and track meets;
elementary school graduations, middle school graduations, high school, junior
college, regular college, more college; moves—my God, I must have moved or
helped someone else move at least fifty times in my life.
Yet her one singular
request that required but one responding action to close the deal goes
unfulfilled for 40 years.
I could—and probably
should—bring the picture to the thrift store. I see pictures in antique stores
all the time that are homeless and probably shouldn’t be and I bet they all
have a story to tell but I can’t do that?
I know what else I can’t
do. I can’t throw it away. She asked me to hold it for her and that is what I
will do. I’m keeping up my end of the bargain but something about that doesn’t
feel so good.
I also know something
else. I know I probably won’t be holding on to this portrait for another 40
years. I’ll never be this young again.
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