Some say that memory is rose-tinted, hindsight being not only twenty-twenty but also casting a glow over the reality so as to leave everything looking — from the present backward — blurred in happy tones of pinkened truth.
Others say that memories are like old photographs: captured snippets that fade with time, cropped in snapshot-frame remembrance that neatly deletes the story as it existed on either side of the single picture.
I have just such a faded-snapshot memory, captured in camera, among my childhood keepsakes. My recollection of the events surrounding that photograph may not be fully detailed and carry a slightly rosy tint, but there is nothing faded about the feelings it evokes. Picture, if you will:
- pre-kindergarten Feve, hair bright white-blonde, sitting on grandpa’s lap at the dining table with plastic tea things strewn about in ready-for-use tea-party style: the tea cups — yellow; the table cloth — checkered gingham green
- grandpa is smiling in this pictorial memorial, looking sheepish but delighted, clearly enjoying the proceedings even if slightly chagrined that his daughter (Feve’s momma) is capturing his Domination By Granddaughter on camera for all posterity
- Feve is serious-looking, pointing at one of the cups: clearly grandpa needs directions for how this is to go — after all, what could grandpas possibly know about having tea parties with little girls?
You would think this interaction would have taken place during a light-hearted visit, a doting grandfather delighting – and being delighted by – his eldest grandchild. It would be easy to assume that it was, perhaps, a common occurrence that just happened to get caught on camera one time. That it was something simple.
The truth is slightly more complicated.
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