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.