What came through the air from Europe to America, nestled in the cold belly of an airplane, buffeted by currents and winds? Words: the graceful but cramped handwriting of an aunt skating over paper thin enough to warrant a place in a mailbag in a cargo hold. The envelope shares space in a drawer with other words, like the back-of-a-postcard, “having a wonderful time, wish you were here” clichés in the staccato, angled, and unrefined hand of a second sister, always unsure of herself and overcompensating with a nose in the air and imperious orders on her tongue. Was her future betrayal there for anyone with eyes to see?
On a little green knoll
—”Old Log House” by James S. Tippett
At the edge of the wood
My great great grandmother’s
First house stood. …
Among the snapshots and portraits tucked into one box or another does an image of my great-great grandmother’s house appear? Could it be a boxy stone building typical of the Abruzzo region? Is it the house behind a young woman and motorbike in an image that captivated me a year or two ago?
The yellowed photograph I use as a bookmark in Anna Karenina features my mother (at first, I thought it was her sister Angie), dressed to the nines in a woolen suit with gold buttons and dark trim adorning the jacket in the most flattering way. With the fox stole around her neck and understated but lovely black leather handbag, she appears as though she might have been in a class to socialize with Anna, Levin, and Oblonsky. The setting is certainly her family’s backyard in Maine, with its enormous, neatly fenced vegetable garden serving as backdrop.
I had not noticed the woman in the window of the black-and-white image I use as a bookmark in All the Light We Cannot See (the best book I have read in at least the past year; it is marvelous). I chose the picture (assuredly, my mom’s work) because it looked as if it may have been taken around the time of World War II, and I like the snapshot of a preteen girl in floral dress and braids showing off either a large, lifelike doll, or a stiff-legged toddler. The composition is excellent, with the diagonal leading me from the baby’s toes up to the gigantic woman framed by the window. Is she reading a letter, a recipe, looking down into a bassinet?