“Probably two years ago, when we moved here and set up the storage unit.”
I nodded, aware that military families like my dad’s typically took stock of everything in their possession every two to three years when they got orders to move somewhere new. No doubt their unit was neat and methodically organized, just like their garage and attic back at the house.
Still, with so many moves, unnecessary items were often jettisoned along the way. I asked my father why he’d kept these particular photos for so long.
He was quiet for a while before he responded.
“They’re such great pictures. I don’t know. I guess somehow holding on to them allowed me to hold on to the memory of your mom in a way that wasn’t painful or complicated.”
“Do you want to go through them with me, back at the house?” I asked, almost reluctantly.
He shook his head, much to my relief. “Nah, you enjoy them on your own,” he replied. “Heaven knows you’ve waited long enough to see them.”
When we arrived home, Brady had just been dropped off from football practice, and he and Liz and my dad all greeted each other warmly. I felt obligated to stick around, one big happy family and all that, but when Dad finally settled down at the kitchen table with a beer and began sharing with them the same stories from his trip that he’d already told me in the car, I excused myself and headed upstairs, box in hand, hoping they wouldn’t think me rude for slipping away.
In my room I closed the door and sat on my bed with the strongbox in front of me. I snapped open the metal clasp and lifted the lid, tilting it back on its hinges. Inside were dozens of envelopes, each one fat with photos and coffee-brown negative strips. I pulled out the first envelope, dated the year my parents were married, and began to go through it. It looked as if the pictures had all been taken in Germany and focused primarily on the rural countryside there. They weren’t especially good—nothing like what Lark would have done—but they were okay.
Returning them to their envelope, I moved on to the next and then the next, pleased to see that my mother’s talent as a photographer grew as time went on. I’d learned enough from Lark to notice the slow, subtle mastery of composition, exposure, technique.
From the packet dated the year I was born, I finally ran across a few shots of myself as an infant. But otherwise, my mother had continued to take mostly landscape shots, the only difference being the ongoing growth in her abilities as a photographer. Once we returned to Germany for a second tour, her pictures got even better, as they were especially sharp and clear and colorful.
I kept looking with great interest, occasionally running across another picture of myself as a child, usually outside, playing ball or patting a horse or jumping into a pile of autumn leaves. But primarily these were beautifully composed photos of rural Germany. There were farmhouses, fields of grain, half-timbered barns, horses, cows, laundry on the line, flowering hedges, hills of green, glistening brooks, and budding trees. No urban landscapes, no street scenes, no skylines. Every envelope that came after was that way as well, a few shots of me here and there, but mostly scenes as pastoral and peaceful as any Amish farm on any day of the year.
The envelopes came to an end once our second tour ended, the very last photo an aerial shot of the German countryside, probably snapped through the window of the plane that flew us home.
I sat back against the pillows and looked into the box, taking in the pictures in their entirety. Almost immediately, I realized what my mother had done here. Through the camera lens, she had managed to recreate an Amish-like world for herself from an ocean away. By focusing on scenes of the bucolic European countryside, she had found a way to tease out scenes reminiscent of Lancaster County.
This was what the photography had given her in the end, the ability to capture scenes that took her home, even if only in her imagination.
Feeling sad but settled somehow, those questions finally laid to rest, I said a prayer of thanks and then set the box on the dresser and headed back downstairs, expecting to find my family still gathered at the table, chatting happily and catching up with each other. Instead, Dad was gone, Liz had returned to the couch and was dozing there, and Brady was sitting on the floor wearing headphones and silently playing a video game on the TV. He didn’t even glance my way when I came in the room, so I went in search of my father.
I was afraid he might have gone on to bed, but I found him in his study, going the through mail that Liz had sorted each day and had me put on his desk. He looked up as I came in, his eyes wide with curiosity.
“Well?”
I smiled, somewhat wistfully I’m sure, as I settled into the chair that faced the desk.
“I went through every single picture.”