Family Portrait Essay

My great-grandmother, who is ninety-five years old, recently sent me a movie of herself that I had never seen before. While cleaning out the noodle of her Florida home, she came across a studio enactment she had taken about a year before she married my great-grandfather. This picture of my great-grandmother as a twenty-year-old girl and the story john it have fascinated me from the moment I began to consider it. The young wo composition in the picture has a face that resembles my own in many ways. Her face is a bit more than oval than mine, but the softly waving brown hair around it is identical. The small, straight nose is the kindred model I was born with.My great-grandmothers mouth is closed, yet there is just the slightest hint of a grinning on her full lips. I know that if she had smiled, she would have shown the same wide grin and down-curving smile lines that appear in my own snapshots. The most haunting feature in the photo, however, is my great-grandmothers eyes. They are an require duplicate of my own large, dark brown ones. Her brows are plucked into thin lines, which are like twain pencil strokes added to highlight those fine, luminous eyes.Ive also carefully studied the clothing and jewelry in the photograph. Although the photo was taken seventy-five years ago, my great-grandmother is wearing a blouse and skirt that could easily be have on today. The blouse is made of heavy eggshell-colored satin and reflects the light in its folds and hollows. It has a turned-down cowl collar and smocking on the shoulders and below the collar. The smocking (tiny rows of gathered material) looks hand-done. The skirt, which covers my great-grandmothers calves, is straight and made of light wool or flannel. My great-grandmother is wearing silver-tongued drop earrings. They are about both inches long and roughly shield-shaped. On her left wrist is a matching bracelet. My great-grandmother cant find this bracelet now, despite our having spent hours searchi ng through the attic for it. On the third finger of her left hand is a ring with a large, square-cut stone.The story behind the picture is as interesting to me as the young woman it captures. Great-Grandmother, who was earning twenty-five dollars a week as a file clerk, decided to give her boyfriend (my great-grandfather) a picture of herself. She spent almost two weeks salary on the skirt and blouse, which she bought at a fancydepartment store downtown. She borrowed the earrings and bracelet from her of age(p) sister, Dorothy. The ring she wore was a present from some other young man she was dating at the time. Great-Grandmother spent another chunk of her salary to pay the portrait photographer for the hand-tinted print in old-fashioned tones of brown and tan. honorable before giving the picture to my great-grandfather, she scrawled at the lower left, Sincerely, Beatrice. When I study this picture, I react in many ways. I think about the trouble that my great-grandmother went to in order to impress the young man who was to be my great-grandfather. I laugh when I look at the ring, which was probably worn to make him jealous. I smile at the serious, formal inscription my great-grandmother used at this stage of the budding relationship. Sometimes, I am filled with a mixture of pleasure and sadness when I look at this frozen long since moment. It is a moment of beauty, of love, andin a wayof my own past.