Well, I never really posted more of my writings about beginnings during the first week of the new year as I promised. I wondered why I kept putting it off, but maybe I’m just not ready at the moment to reveal some of the pieces of my past. Maybe that’s what had me lying around all week, finding every reason in the world not to write about what I wanted to write about. The beginning. I puttered around the house and the garage burying myself into everything except writing about what I said I’d write about. And that’s ok.
With all my digging around, I uncovered my father’s briefcase from so very many years ago. I knew what was in it before I opened it and it was something I was glad to see again. I said out loud to no one in particular that I was amazed by how heavy men’s briefcases were 30 years ago.
In the early 1980’s, my father decided to try acting. Living in and near New York City, this wasn’t really a difficult task for the adventurous soul that was my father. I remember him talking about auditions and subsequently, rehearsals and though I never saw him actually act in a production, I do know that he always seemed to be getting walk on roles as “the cop’. My father was a tall redheaded Irish looking guy and sure, he could pass for a police officer I guess. Why not?
So, in this red leather briefcase I found my father’s headshot. It wasn’t actually his headshot, but the very large negative of his headshot. When I carefully pulled the piece of film out of its waxy envelope that fit it perfectly, I sat in my living room face to face with the very ghostly face of my father looking back at me in negative. Huge, oversized, negative.
My mind didn’t remember him looking so thin. He wore the same glasses in the negative that he wore in his coffin 25 years or so later… at least they appeared to be the same gold sort-of-aviator rimmed specs he wore at both of these life (death?) events. A nice collared shirt and a serious, wide eyed look on his face complete the picture. I imagine a photographer telling him to look straight at the camera and remain expressionless. He did a good job of that.
So I stared at negative dad for a bit and just immersed myself right into missing him. How often does one get to stare at an almost life size negative head of one’s own long dead father anyway? It was eerie and comforting at the same time. Simultaneously a blast from the past and a presence sitting in the room with me yet again. I then did what I usually do when I’m sort of at a loss for what to do. I picked up the phone and called my daughter.
“Hey, I have a negative of Grandpa. You’re a photographer. How can I get it developed?”
A talented photographer herself who makes her living capturing beautiful couples (http://www.lilyszabo.com -a mom’s gotta plug), she started to explain how I could scan the negative and upload it to a website that would convert it to a photograph for me. As I started to ask the inevitable newbie questions she seemed to almost anticipate from me these days, I heard her take a deep breathe and say, “Take a picture of it on a white background and send it to me.”
Excitedly, I spent a few minutes trying to tape the image onto my white kitchen cabinets. There didn’t seem to be any other white background that would fit. The reflection of the overhead lights put weird ethereal orbs and glowing shapes into the pictures. Finally, I just got fed up and snapped a mediocre shot with my phone and texted it to her.
Within a few minutes, I got a text back. There he was, staring at me. If the image I sent was negative dad, was this positive dad? I was positive it was dad. That’s for sure. It was dad before the cancer started to show its face. It was dad when he was still living at home with us kids and with his wife, our mother. It was dad when we drove to the Pennsylvania Dutch Country on the weekends and took extended family trips to Cooperstown and Lake George in the summer. It was healthy dad who was still able to work out at the gym, run his business, do a little acting on the side, and do some other things on the side before his wife found out and the shit hit the fan for all of us. So yes, this is positive dad in so many ways and I am that much better off for having been his daughter.
Geneiveve Kaufman Writes 