Nephew's Graduation Party

Nephew Drew's life is the one we are celebrating today at an open house: inside, deck and backyard. I report his plans include attending community college while living at home. He starts with those freshman required classes. A major might have been business but now education for elementary grades is another possibility . He sits in the front row of the panoramic photo of his class. His class is larger than the entire high school my own children attended eight and ten years earlier. The pictures his family selected to display are moments of what he has been doing for the last eighteen years.

Host once said that he captures moments of time in his photos. He said that he knows what we were doing in the photo, and he suggested that I write captions for his pictures about what was happening elsewhere in the world since I enjoy the stories of others. When I look at Drew's photos, I wonder what he was doing and thinking because I don't know the story of that moment. We know more about the highlights of his life than we shared experiences from his life. The four-hour distance between our homes and the ten and eight year age difference between Drew and his cousins contributed to the dissonance of our alternate realities.

I think I'm talking to Drew when I speak toward the depicted toddler Drew, "When you were three years old, Lesley had surgery for scoliosis and that was about the same time that Brian was the only member of the junior-high cross country team. " I turn back to listen to Drew's story of the picture. He had already left my conversation to attend to other guests.

I return to look at other pictures. Now I turn the volume of my conversation down to inner monologue, "We show up on special occasions, and we try to fit into your life. At the same time we try to restore family connections with your grandparents, your parents and your sister. We celebrate Christmas two or three weekends before the actual holiday. I used to buy books to encourage you to read because that is a favorite past-time of mine, and I hoped we might share reading as a common interest. Now it is easier to swap gift cards from stores, restaurants or gas stations. We bring the photo albums of our past year. Every year Host shares pictures he shoots at Christmas."

Framed photos of our family are on shelves of your family bookcase. My photo is the one I had taken in 1990 so that is the aunt you knew when you were two years old. "Did you know the story behind that picture? I earned my black belt in the martial art of taekwondo and that formally posed portrait went to South Korea with my application for recognition of my black belt status with the Kuwikkikwon."

I rarely keep portraits on display. I keep the pictures in our chronological order. Drew's graduation picture may be framed now, but by the end of the year, it will be in a pocket in an album, labeled 2006, and this story of his graduation party will be linked to it.