A FAMILY ALBUM

I’m not trying to convince you of anything. You would never understand.
You would never really believe me. No one ever does. 

Baba, my Polish great-grandmother from Riga, a family legend.
She died before I could see her for myself.

My grandparents’ wedding. He divorced her for desertion.
She told her daughters he never did anything for them.
He drank beer and carried a gun and it was Prohibition.
A Russian, he Americanized his name to Mike Miller.

Sisters Dolores and Virginia.
Dolly took her stepfather’s name and made a religion of her family.
Virginia, my mother and the elder sister, reverted to Miller.

My step-grandfather standing behind a rosebush, God knows why.
We somehow never had anything to say to each other.

My mom when she still had her swagger.
She was vain and damaged and beautiful and interested in everything and very much alive.

Aunt Dolly, already defeated.
She refused to see and refused to act and made an art of passive aggression.
The most intelligent and witty of her mother’s children.

My mother and brother.
The image captures her characteristic tension.

Nana and me, her captive.

Me again, in overalls and a babushka, with a chicken.
I have this sense of Jersey sandy soil in my bones.
The smell of tomato leaves, cement birdbaths surrounded by zinnias.

My brother and me and some background drama.
No doubt my mother with the camera, putting a good face everything.

Mickie and Chuck, a prophetic image.

My Mom the plant lady at the Philadelphia Flower Show.
She predeceased her mother, who insisted on erasing the Miller name from her obituary.
But hey, she was dead.

Nana with Mr. D., her late-life companion.
I think she was better with him than with either of her husbands.
What a thoroughly good person he was, what a blessing upon my generation.

Me at the Gulf of Mexico, a year or so from starting law school.
Still very new at life and deeply anxious.

Chuck, nature photographer.
Because te woods are a safe space and we’re not going to deal with anything.

Nana and Shep in her Pennsylvania backyard.
She won.

 

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