Opelousas, Louisiana, circa 1962
This photograph takes me back to a simpler time, when life was small enough to fit around a kitchen table.
I was four years old, sitting with my brother Glenn, drawing or coloring at the dining table. What draws me in now is not just seeing us there, but noticing all the ordinary things around us that once made up our world.
In the center of the table is a glass bowl and plate that appears in several old family photographs. After my mother passed away, her photographs, along with those of her mother, became mine. Years before she died, she told me she had received the bowl and plate as a gift in 1948. She usually placed it on a plastic doily, just as it is shown here.
On the right side of the table is my mother’s western leather purse. I loved that purse. A few years ago, I saw one very much like it in an antique store, and I still wish I had bought it. She must have liked the western look, because the sofa, coffee table, and end tables she had purchased a few months before this photo also reflected that style.
In the left corner stands the television, with its speaker at the bottom. I do not know what size it was, but for its time it probably seemed large. It is the same television on which we later watched news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Resting on top of it is another of my mother’s plastic doilies.
The refrigerator, too, speaks of its time, with the kind of handle that pulled away from the door and a freezer built within the main unit. The table was metal, red and white, with two leaves to make it larger when company came. So many families had a table like that then.
During this time, my father was away on an Army tour of duty, so it was just my mother, Glenn, and me at home. My mother worked at a local five-and-dime store, J. W. Low, and while she worked, my grandparents usually cared for Glenn and me.
My hair was short for most of my childhood, just as it is in this photograph. My mother liked it cut in a pixie style. It was not until my middle teens that I was allowed to grow it long, and eventually it reached my waist.
My mother kept a neat, clean house, which is why it surprises me now to see her purse on the table. She was usually the kind of person who went straight to her bedroom and put it in the same place every time.
One night, I slipped in the bathtub, struck my chin, and needed stitches. In those days, doctors sometimes made house calls or opened their offices after hours for emergencies. Once my mother called the doctor, we headed to his office.
A popular song at the time was “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” and my mother often reminded me of that whenever I started to cry, especially while my chin was being stitched.
But big girls do cry.
We cry when we are hurt, upset, or disappointed. We cry from happiness, too, from falling in love, from having children, and from the deep joy life sometimes brings. And later, we cry from loss, because no matter how old we are, sorrow still finds us.
That may be one of the quiet truths hidden inside this childhood photograph. A little girl sits at a table, safe in the ordinary world around her, not yet knowing how much life will one day ask of her.
