Family Portrait Essay

My great-grandmother, who is ninety-five years old, recently sent me a photograph of herself that I had never seen originally. While cleaning out the attic of her Florida home, she came across a studio portrayal she had taken about a year out front she married my great-grandfather. This picture of my great-grandmother as a twenty-year-old girl and the story canful it have fascinated me from the moment I began to consider it. The young char in the picture has a face that resembles my own in umpteen ways. Her face is a bit more oval than mine, but the thinly waving brown hair around it is identical. The small, straight nose is the resembling model I was born with.My great-grandmothers mouth is closed, yet thither is just the s startest hint of a smile 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 place in my own snapshots. The most haunting feature in the photo, however, is my great-grandmothers eyes. They be an exact duplicate of my own large, dark brown ones. Her brows are plucked into thin lines, which are like 2 pencil strokes added to cotton up those fine, luminous eyes.Ive also carefully studied the clothing and jewellery in the photograph. Although the photo was taken seventy-five years ago, my great-grandmother is wearing a blouse and edge that could easily be worn 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 beneath the collar. The smocking (tiny rows of gathered material) looks travel by-done. The skirt, which covers my great-grandmothers calves, is straight and made of light woollen or flannel. My great-grandmother is wearing silver drop earrings. They are about two inches long and roughly shield-shaped. On her left wrist is a twinned bracelet. My great-grandmother cant find this bracelet now, despite our having spent hours meddling 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 hebdomad 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 honest-to-god sister, Dorothy. The ring she wore was a present from another young man she was geological 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.Just 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 anesthetize that my great-grandmot her 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 realise 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 concoction 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.