As I sit in a pile of old documents, photos, and notes—many from my mom to her “Grammy” and from her brother to her mom—my eyes catch the photo. I had heard from my Grammy of her times as a stewardess and from my mom after she passed of this photo as well as others. However, I myself had never seen it with my own eyes. It is interesting how familiar we can become with a time in which we were not alive, a story we were not part of, or photo we have never seen. It is also interesting to me that, within this box, time is condensed as pictures of three generations taken around the same ages sit together.

To be honest, this photo strayed very little from the image I had created in my head. It had not faded the way her other photos had, and it was printed from American Airlines negative no. 18442. I saw my Grammy with a glint in her eyes and an ear to ear smile, standing next to him. You would think my eyes would fixate on him, at the time an actor but later a governor and then the president, but he seemed secondary to her. It’s funny that she lacks the look of excited disbelief typically displayed on people when photographed with a famous figure. Instead she just looks happy to be flying and working such a unique job for its time.

I don’t know if I would have loved being an American Airlines Stewardess the way she had. She was critiqued every flight for specific details of appearance and personal characteristics such as hairstyle, nails, smile, posture, etc. She was rated rather than appreciated for her beautiful smile and friendly attitude. The first remark made in her observation report from Flight 286 was, “Shirley – Your appearance is very attractive.” The second was, “Your passenger contacts are made in a very friendly manner with a lovely, spontaneous smile which you use to good advantage.” Sure, these are positive remarks, but it still feels like she is being ridiculed. Maybe I feel this way because the positive remarks paragraph is much shorter than the recommendations, or maybe it is because the categories she was graded on are quite sexist and arbitrary to her proficiency in her job. I know that she loved being a stewardess and that the way she was being scrutinized by others didn’t faze her. At the time, being a stewardess was pretty special and the people who were able to fly anywhere had the prestige and wealth that the man in the photo did. She served many famous figures and her charm was felt by all passengers.

Instead of making me miss her or wish I had time to ask her more about the photograph, I am content learning from the documents she has left and leaving the rest up to my imagination. I know that, through this box, I can learn things my Grammy would have never told me. Her grades listed in report cards from every quarter of high school, a photo of her dancing with an old boyfriend, a death certificate for her son who died unexpectedly at age 22, pictures of her in a “Career Girl Fashion Show.” A woman who I had always known as elderly, sweet, and smelling of cookies I could now see as a playful little girl, an adventurous teenager, or a working young adult.

*As you can probably tell, the picture shown is not the one I finally found and described above. I chose to include a picture of just her in her stewardess days because she always talked about how it was special to be able to fly with her passengers no matter who they were. Thus, I have chosen to leave the man with her in the photograph anonymous to stand as a placeholder for all of the passengers she attended.

During my childhood, my family moved houses around the second grade. We remained at that home, what I consider my childhood home, for ten or eleven years. Most recently, during my college experience, we moved houses again to find ourselves at our current home. I bring this up because I remember we had designated spaces on bookshelves for our hefty photo albums and family letters. From the two times I remember helping pack up our belongings, the collections of photo albums were some of the first to be moved with the furniture.

Over the years, I have enjoyed looking through these albums learning about the different family members and the stories my mom has shared with my siblings and I. I am impressed with the consistency my parents photographed the early years of their marriage, important events in their lives and family gatherings. As I am the last of four, I struggled to find the photographs in which I finally appeared, but once we found them, I am glad they had plenty of film.

I chose this photograph because it captures the essence of two family members: my great grandma who has me on her lap, and one of my older sisters. I love this photo because I am reminded of the immense love both had/have for me. My great grandma passed away when I was twelve. I remember the day before she passed, she was still showering me with multiple forehead kisses and wanting to hold my hand. When she would visit the US from Mexico, she would alternate weeks staying with my aunt’s, but stayed the longest with my family. I cherish the memories I remember with her. When my mom would say no candy, my grandma would sneak us both a small piece of a sweet or hard candy. Vivid moments like these are priceless for me.

This is also one of my favorite photographs because my sister Elizabeth is attached to both my grandma and I. My birthday is coming up next week and I probably would not have touched these albums before then. This assignment is timely, these photos are an “in” to when my dad was able to capture my first few days at home with family. Elizabeth and I have a very special bond, although we are not twins like our older sisters, in a sense we are. In almost all of the photos captured after my birth, she is in most hovering around me and smiling. My mom reminded me that all of my sisters were so excited.

Since my grandma’s passing, I started to think more about something my mom shared years ago that became more special to me while at Bowdoin. As I walked home to my dorm room during cold winters nights, I could pinpoint the big dipper in an enormous collection of stars. I started to associate these, even if they were not the same… with different people or the presence of someone in my family. I found comfort in these moments, thinking of those people – and as I rediscover these photographs, I continue to find and appreciate the love of family I am so lucky to have.

I had no idea how to start this project. My parents just moved to South Carolina and we barely have anything personal in the house. I can picture all the photo albums we have, sitting in cardboard boxes in a basement, 877 miles away in Millbrook, New York. Since going through physical photos wasn’t an option, I turned to technology.

I began with the Photos album on my laptop. Conveniently for this project, Apple’s Photos assembles albums based on each person using facial recognition. It was great to look through all my old photos of my family members, but I was still stumped. So, I texted my sister asking what she was doing. Luckily, she agreed to help. She pulled up our mom’s Facebook page. You have to understand about our mom – everything goes on Facebook and she is quite fond of flashbacks. “TBT” While we found some great pictures of our grandparent’s in 80s clothing, I still didn’t find the one. Then I realized I had already seen it. It, was my sister’s contact photo of our dad. Another great retro 80s look, but much cooler.

I can only imagine my dad out skiing with his friends and they are just waiting for a chairlift or another friend and my dad pops up on his skis for a second. His friends see this cool stunt and say to my dad, “Doug, you gotta do that again so I can take a photo.” This is one of my favorite photos of my dad because it is both such a cool photo and represents his character.

My “winter garden photograph” is a young photo of my maternal grandfather. If I had to guess, I would say he was either in his late twenties or early thirties. It is a portrait photo of him sitting up straight in a suit, with his lips slightly curved up. Personally, I did not know my grandfather very well. He knew me as a baby, but I didn’t see him again until I was 12 years old on a family trip to Nigeria, and, sadly, he died a year later. Before meeting him, my mom would tell me stories of him, and she always remembered him fondly. She used to describe her father as a disciplinarian; he was very strict and wouldn’t take any bs from his children. He was highly educated, hard-working, and successful, which was a feat, in and of itself, because he came from a poor background. He had a bank job and owned his own poultry farming business. Bank jobs in Nigeria hold the prestige as being a doctor or a lawyer in the U.S. He would travel abroad to different places in Europe for business, which was extremely uncommon, even for people to do in Nigeria today. I asked my mom once that if he was able to travel abroad, then why didn’t he ever come to the U.S.? She said that he didn’t agree with the ways the U.S. did things and would never go. He held himself to a pretty high standard, one could even say he was a little cocky based on the way my mother and grandmother have described him to me, and I feel like that is radiated in the photo.

The photo I have is actually a photo of the original photo that I took on my trip to Nigeria. I completely forgot I had it until I went through all my family photos. To a regular person, they would see just a black man, maybe think he is a respected black man because of his clothing and the way he is sitting. However, I see a black man who was able to beat the odds, especially during a time when the consensus was that African people were less than. He did business with white people and was respected by them.

I am delighted I was at least able to meet him. I met him when he was much older (in his 80’s), so “winter garden photograph” of him isn’t what I saw in 2012, but I see some resemblances between him in the photo and what he looked like when he died. Even in death, he is respected and remembered fondly by his family community.

As I looked through old family photos, I noticed common themes of change, togetherness, growing up, and most importantly, happiness. My family (including myself) basically hoards physical photographs that desperately need to be organized into albums instead of sitting in a dusty chest disguised as a coffee table in the middle of the living room or lining the walls of my room. I enjoy looking at family photos as my parents’ transition from taking at least 50,000 pictures of their first child, my brother, at every angle and slowly begin to spend less time behind the camera once I, the last child of four, am born. My three siblings and parents all have very distinct personalities that are often represented in family photographs however, it was difficult to pinpoint one image that really exhibited the true essence of just one. However, as I compared baby photos from the early 90s to early 2000s, I noticed a trend in the spirit and emotion of one family member, my grandfather.

My mother’s parents live an hour away from my home in Omaha, Nebraska and thus have been extremely prevalent in my entire life. My traditions, sense of humor, personal values, and graciousness come directly from my grandparents. In each photo of my grandfather, whether it was a photo from a family vacation, the hospital the day I was born, or one of the many times my grandparents babysat us as my parents escaped their four crazy children, my grandfather is always smiling. However, after looking through this chest and failing to find a photograph that captured the true essence of my grandfather, I remembered a photo that I hung on a wall in my room several years earlier.

This photo (mostly likely taken after a few glasses of fireball) was found a couple of years ago along with a series of very similar pictures of my grandparent’s friends smiling just as hard and just as close to the camera. This photo not only captures the essence of my grandfather’s sense of humor, social personality, and obsession with sweater vests, but illustrates my personal forever image of my grandfather. From growing up very poor in the small farming town of Leshara, Nebraska to now, happily retired with my grandmother and able to support nine grandchildren from three daughters of his own, my grandfather will forever be represented by the happiness of this photo. Even though I was not present when this photograph was taken, the constant jokes followed by contagious laughter and the raw spirit of my grandfather at every family gathering is never something I take for granted, especially during times like these when seeing loved ones is more difficult than ever before.

My family doesn’t usually look at photographs and albums very often. I think since the majority of my family is still back in El Salvador, they rely heavily on social media like Facebook to connect with the rest of the family that is in the United States. A lot of pictures get posted there and that is what we usually talk about. It was rare for my mom and me to go through the pictures especially, pictures of herself. She grew up in the more rural parts of El Salvador and she doesn’t have any pictures of herself then but through stories, I feel like I can imagine what she looked like especially when I have a lot of her features. I think having her by my side during this process helped me find my “winter garden photograph.” 

My mom appears to be a serious woman when someone glances at her but in reality, she is a social butterfly that is constantly smiling during conversation. Photographs are able to capture her essence within her smile and her mannerisms that make her who she is. Most of the photos are from her being the U.S. for the first time and so she appears differently, I wasn’t able to meet that version of my mother, the one who came to a new country and sought a better life for herself. My mother is brave and she worked for what she has and she made a lot of things grow, that is who she is. She nurtures those around her despite coming from a background in which she had significantly less than others. 

My mother told me the story of how she met my father while we were looking at photos of her since a couple of pictures of my dad came up. He also came from El Salvador when he was young with his brother and from those photos, you can tell he was one of those “cool” guys with the way he posed in his pictures. She told me how she would walk by him on the stairs of the apartment building they both lived in on her way to work and that he would always try to talk to her. She gave in one day and spoke to him and he asked her out to the movies. They both watched Titanic but the thing with my mother is that even now she struggles to understand English and so I asked her if she understood the movie and she said no. I proceeded to explain Titanic to her. If there is something that explains the kind of person my mother is, it is that story.

It was pouring outside, my mom brought out the boxes and albums of photos. I honestly do not remember the last time I looked at family photos. My mom grew up in Iran and the photos depicted a different time. The albums had photos of the first time my grandparents met, to when my mom was about 5. There were a good amount of people that I didn’t know, so I was curious about who they were. My mom told me about the people I didn’t recognize and even some funny stories about them.

We got to the last page of the only photo album left and the last photo was of a woman in her twenties standing next to a man. This woman looks strong and proud. She wears her outfit confidently. It is of my grandmother. She is energetic, outgoing, and the quality I admire most is that she follows her heart. She makes every decision confidently. Another photo caught my eye, it was of my grandmother holding my mother. 

She is loving and pours her heart in everything she does. My mom has inherited all of those great qualities. She is one of the toughest women I know. I have always admired her. It made me think about the things that get passed down not necessarily objects, but memories, characteristics, and life lessons. 

I don’t have access to our family photo albums right now, so I started off looking through the pictures I have saved on my iPhone for my winter garden photograph. Most of the photos I had in my phone of family members were pretty mundane, however, so I talked to my mom (the photo keeper of the family) about what old photos she might have on her computer. I looked through the photos she had on her laptop but still didn’t see anything that really caught my attention. As I was struggling to find a photo to choose, my Mom then remembered she had a few print photos from her childhood with her. I took a look at them and one of the photos in particular stood out.

It was a photo I’d never seen before of my mom in her late teens making a wacky pose on the beach in New York. This photo captured a part of my mom that I love, and it was pretty crazy to see it on display 20 years before I even existed. To me the photo captures something that I’ve always admired about my mom, that she’s not really concerned with what other people think of her.

This trait of hers often comes out through her extroverted and goofy nature. Whether its singing or dancing throughout the house, she’s never afraid of making a fool of herself in the process of having fun. This has always been one of my favorite things about my mom and seeing her display this wacky, fun-loving side of hers in a photo from the 1970s was really cool to see.

It’s around 10 pm and my mother, father, sister, and I gather around the dinner table with four shoeboxes filled with old photographs. I rummage through one box as I come across pictures of my mom and dad when they were dating in the ’90s. My parents first started dating when my mom was 14 and my dad 16. I asked them questions about the clothes they were wearing, where they hung out. I began looking at more photos to find images of my older sister before I was born. We laughed and it was a great bonding experience for us. It had been a long and hard week so to share laughs over photos was as if a weight was being lifted. 

Suddenly, I came around to my own photographs. I saw my first pictures, newborn baby, in awe of the world, but evident of the sass and spunk I was destined to obtain. My parents reminded me that as a baby I had such a vibrant personality and I was extremely stubborn.Then I came across this picture, it shows my mother and me at my first birthday party… obviously blues clues themed. My mom tells me stories about my first birthday and how I was scared of blues clues and cried the entire time and refused to walk even though I basically knew how. 

Looking at this photograph I see the protective yet supportive side of my mother and for me, that is her essence. Since before I was brought into this world, my mother has done everything in her power to protect me and keep me safe. She has also supported all of my dreams even when I wasn’t sure of them myself. This is shown in the way she holds me as she crouches down to get close to me assuring me that she will always be there. In her hands as well as with one hand she holds me tightly with a grip that is protective and forceful, and in the other, she uplifts me and holds me up.  My mom has a great balance even now of supporting me in my endeavors, but also giving me the insight that I need to ultimately protect and help me. It isn’t as assertive as this picture where she holds me to prevent me from falling on my face, but she lets me know that she will always protect and support me no matter how old I get.