Thoughts on a Photograph (06.29.24)
When I heard the news of Michael, their first-born son, passing that evening at the age of 85, my heart sunk, and I lost track of my breath. Sitting in the dark, my mind drifted back again to the picture of the Kostas family portrait. Year unknown but locked somewhere in the mid 20th century. Ornate wallpaper flanking them, with long almost metallic drapery, and true wood furniture in front of them and to their sides. Black and white originally and later colorized like parlor dolls and pastel statues. The last time I was at Yia Yia Froso’s house, I took the opportunity to take another picture of that picture in the room where they had all been seated. Just outside the windows – a once tree lined street – now an unknown place. That picture serves as a family heirloom like a watercolor expanding in scope across an opaque screen in my memory. I’m sure I am not the only one who thinks of it. I’ve stared at it with so much frequency over the years with a mixture of emotions, but mostly curiosity and wonderment.
From Frashtan and Grapsh to Ionnina and finally to Worcester. Unsure of the complete path, but fully aware of the coordinates. Sponsored by a Greek Albanian who had made his way to the United States. For no other reason would we be here if not for that unnamed man – the photo and all the lives and particulars of that photo included in a rectangle. I could call back each of them as they sat – Mikalis in a suit half sitting on the arm of the couch with his thin face slightly turned, Eleftheria (Liberty) slouching back a bit in the couch with that spark – the lone blonde, Efrosini the matriarch with an unmoved masculine face holding Eleftheria’s hand, Thomas the patriarch stoic and stern neither elated nor defeated sharing the center, Elpida (Hope) the eldest daughter graceful, elegant and upright, Lambrini (Light) the youngest with a girlish sparkle and bangs slightly blurred on the edge as if noting for any spectator she couldn’t keep still. After each passed (1984, 2010, 2017 and now 2024), I have come back to that photo. Thomas, and then Lambro, and then Elpida, and then Efrosini, and now Mikalis. I’ve thought about them all in relation to each other and in relation to me and those of us left. All but one gone now. All but one still seated and breathing among us. Liberty.
The youngest grandchild archiving some version of their truths without fully knowing it and without fully knowing them. Historic fiction. Creating a story of my own from their stories. Piecing it together albeit wishing I truly knew and not really having them here to corroborate. Filling it with the sensations of my youth, when we are all together with more frequency. Eating and drinking and yelling and teasing and eating and teasing.
Most of us live these lives of feeling our family members through blood but not fully knowing them as the individuals they were let alone how they perceived themselves or were perceived by their own peers or elders. Essentially, they are all characters living in some form of stunted fiction that I had fixed upon them. Infallible kings and queens, princes and princesses. I often think of their origins – dreaming up the scenery based on their conversations and what I have seen of other pictures. I think of the time when the family portrait was taken. If they had the means to take such a photo. If they were proud to gather as they did and in the order they chose to sit in. Were they teasing each other because the sisters in particular seem to be in on some slight joke. Was it a class victory to have a token in their house of their own existence. Was it necessary to state their means and class at the time? What lives did they lead? How proud were Froso and Shomo of their children at the time and what were they protecting? It’s all unknown in a sense, even with Eleftheria’s memories. It will forever be mostly unknown. Her story represents one of six perspectives, and a long life has molded those stories into some other version of the ultimate truth. Fragments of stories of their past spoken of over family dinners while they were alive and after they passed. Me recounting, from what I can unsure of what has been painted with a wider brush and what little lies have survived and exist now as truth. Eluding the devil. Escaping communism through the mountains with three children and pregnant. Dwelling in a one room house near the lake. Not knowing their birth dates but knowing their birth seasons. Waiting for America as a savior. How much truth they were aware of but didn’t carry forward in these stories will also never be known. For those of us unborn at the time of the image, their stories were entangled in hopes, half-truths, peasant mysticism and dreams that only a god could fulfill. Their individual egos protected the family secrets as families did. Tight lipped and gripping each other’s hand tightly before the picture was taken as if to say – don’t let the truth be revealed or you are so much like me my daughter I will squeeze the blood to your fingertips. Show strength at all costs and joke and tease when it all hurts too much. The agenda was only to survive. The only path forward; to wed and push the bloodline forward and beyond so that your descendants and their descendants until we are all forgotten as sources survive into the beyond. The truth in that moment was inconsequential. Survive.
The pedestals as children we all place our adult family onto as if they were made of marble walking among gods and existing with different types of air surrounding them – was no different with our family. We don’t speak of the darkness with full lungs, but we hold them in our stomachs and know. We just know. They didn’t have the tools or the patience. There is no patience when hunting and shelter are paramount. Not all was right, but they had survived and made it to a land of gold. Froso and Shomo and their children. Their own stories branching out with modern era versions of the same portraits. Me sitting here nearly 40 years from the death of Pa Pou recalling the scent of his aftershave, the gravel of his voice or what I think it was, and our last moments in their living room. The sparkle in his eyes. Just like his wife, his daughters and his son. His bellybutton moved due to a biopsy or a surgery. Some form of cancer, maybe pancreatic, taking him. All so far from me now, I question what I knew and what may have been told. With me, I did know, he was pure love. He is still alive. One of his collared shirts in my closet in 2024. My oldest son just shy of four asking about it. Putting his arms through the holes and asking what a fitted shirt is. If I have my way, he will know some stories of Pa Pou and carry them forward to perhaps live well into a future he could have never imagined. Memory eternal. Since one didn’t sit often for them, imagine sitting for a solitary photo in the 1950s and having the presence of mind to know that it will outlive you. You most likely would not. It will outlive five of you and at some point it will outlive all of you becoming a relic for your descendants to gaze upon and wonder who these people were and how they came to that moment. The only thing to linger would be pride. They made it. Eyes coming back to me, locked in a moment of time. Five of six stories locked them forever in my mind without the need for me to stare down at it once again. Mikalis, his sisters and his parents all in my blood, swirling around in randomness – falling into my thoughts when I least expect it in the dark and silence before I sleep. Not fading from the image but bright and alive together. Memory eternal.