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Parents
The Words Left Unsaid
Words alone had not knitted us together; neither could silence tear the fabric. I remember a crisp fall afternoon when I started to tell my mother that I loved her, that seeing her suffer was more pain than I could bear, that — she held out her arms to stop me. “Don’t speak,” she said, “or we’ll both cry.”
June 1987Portraits
The self-portrait is one of my first photographs.
The picture of my grandmother was taken two days before she died. The children on the wall are me and my sister; the picture in the middle is my grandmother, when she was twenty-one.
June 1987Sunbeams
May 1987But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here — the extraordinary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.
Suitcases Of Baby Food
I wait for my father at the airport, as usual. He is almost two hours late, according to his itinerary No. 48. I should be used to this routine by now.
May 1987Castaway
The bar is everything a bar should be. The lighting is dim and soothing, only the wooden bar and colored bottles gleam, and the bartender is a soft-spoken, soft-moving man with a golden beard.
April 1987The Written Word
Writing words on paper is particularly arrogant. How presumptuous to believe that words on paper can capture meaning, freeze life, hold it for even a moment.
April 1987Broken Promises
Playing board games, returning a rented cap and gown, counting the days
January 1987
