Of Families and Photos

There’s an older man with a budding smile and graying hair brushed back from his temples. There’s a baby boy, not quite a toddler, with barely-there blond hair and a baby-tooth grin. They both wear turtlenecks. The bigger one is beige, the miniature version is bright red.

The man sits behind the little boy, holding his hands so he can stand upright. The baby is not an early walker. He is a precocious talker, however, and “Pop-Pop” is an easy addition to the first-year lexicon.

They both look straight ahead. Into the lens. The shutter snaps.

Within a few years, a heart attack takes the man, along with the memories he could have made with this grandchild and seven others. The grandkids are all young enough to be spared the sad duty of dispensing with their Pop-Pop’s belongings, so his two sons and his daughter handle the chore. They empty the apartment, donate the furniture, toss the papers. In his children’s homes, the things he passed on to them take on a new reverence – the family photos, the turquoise bracelet, the U.S. flag that draped his coffin.

The image of him with the baby boy ends up on his oldest son’s dresser, tucked in the corner of a mirror. This son, named Bob, like his father, has three boys of his own. Photos of the boys at every stage of their busy lives are all over the home Bob shares with his wife, Betty. The snapshot in the mirror is one Bob can’t miss seeing every day.

Now, nearly 30 years after his father’s death, Bob is the one called Pop-Pop. His youngest child,  Steve, has a son, a fair-haired little guy named Jackson who is perpetually in motion, just like Steve was at that age. Steve takes a picture of Jackson when he’s 11 months old and texts it to his parents. Bob looks at it, points Betty to his dresser and says, “Look at this picture of Steve with my father.” The two photos make it clear to them that Steve and his darling son are lookalikes. Betty snaps a cell-phone image of the picture on the mirror and sends it to Steve so he can see how much Jackson looks like he did at the same age.

But Steve has news. He tells his mom he is not the little boy in the old photo. Instead, he was the photographer, snapping it with his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle camera when he was about 6 years old. Steve knows the baby in the old photo is his cousin, Patrick, whose mom is Bob’s sister.

Given their diverse genetics, it’s not likely that Jackson looks exactly like Patrick, his first cousin once removed. Maybe all big-boned, smiley, blond baby boys look vaguely alike. Or maybe we look at photos of people we love and see what we want. Smiles. Memories. Tradition. Family.

Betty shares the story with Patrick’s mom. The two women, sisters-in-law for more than 45 years, enjoy a laugh and commiserate about their inability to recognize their own children.

And Bob tucks the photo back in the corner of his mirror.