Our family was not one to have formal pictures taken. We
were all shutterbugs at one time or another, so there are tons of snapshots of
everyone, but posed studio photos? Not so much. We had only one family portrait
made, and I am reasonably sure it was taken the summer before I was a senior in
high school. At the time, I remember thinking we were all looking p-r-e-t-t-y g-o-o-d,
but when Colene and I came across this photo last month, a bit of shrieking
laughter occurred. Quite a bit, actually,
and not just from the two of us. If my memory serves, pretty much
everyone with whom we shared the photo joined the laugh riot, along with a
continuous chorus of “oh my gosh!” that was not exactly complimentary in its
delivery.
Here’s the portrait:
Um, yeah. That’s probably one of the most unflattering
family portraits Olan Mills™ ever produced, but I don’t think much of the blame
can be laid at OM’s door. Really, the ‘70s are to blame. Lucy#1 is wearing a
bulletproof polyester pantsuit that was actually in style and her glasses are
not even hopelessly outdated (just a little outdated). Colene’s big wire-rim glasses
are the height of fashion! I’m definitely stylin’, what with that awesome
sweater-vest thingy, and I’m here to tell you that pink shirt was very fashionable,
very shiny, and very polyester-silky, so much so that I wore it for years. (I actually
wore it until the day this happened: I was in college and was wearing this same
shirt, which I still loved and still received compliments on even though the buttonholes were beginning to
stretch out a wee-tiny bit. I went out to lunch with my (female) coworker and
as I climbed out of her low-slung car in the office parking lot afterwards, a
(male) professor stuck his head out the second floor window to say something to
us . . . . just as my front-closure brassiere flew open and caused my shirt to
unbutton. Yeah, right there in front of God and Karen and Dr. McKee and a whole
wall of windows at Oak Street Hall. You can bet I whipped around in a flash,
and Karen and McKee both swore they never even knew anything had happened, much
less saw anything except my back as I faced the parking lot with my hand to my
chest, but that was the end of that shirt for me.)
The most awesome thing about this family photo, however,
is the hair! Oh my goodness! Leroy looks just like the retired military guy he
was, and Colene’s hair really isn’t that bad, just not cut well for her
naturally curly hair. Colene really couldn’t help what her hair was doing, what
with being in elementary school and being at Lucy#1's mercy on hairstyles and hair stylists.
But no one will ever
be able to say what we Two Lucys were thinking. Lucy#1 hated getting her hair
cut (obviously, no styling occurred at all), so she went to the most
convenient, least expensive place she could find and got in and out as quickly
as possible. As for me, I actually liked my hair, despite the fact that it
looked like a helmet. (I didn’t actually see the helmet thing at the time, but I
should have, I really should have. Earlier in the very summer this photo was
taken, a boy I met in Florida told me that he had first seen me walking from my
grandma’s house to my aunt’s house and wondered why I was wearing a helmet. But
then, he said, the breeze had picked up a piece of my hair and he had realized
that was my actual hair and not a helmet at all. True story.)
This photo being the product of a family-portrait
session, it’s no wonder we didn’t have additional group photos made. At one
point when I was in my mid-20s, Lucy#1 made Colene and me each have a portrait
made during an Olan Mills™ special event. Colene’s came out fine, but thank
goodness I don’t have those photos at hand because I’d have to include them and
that would just show that I did not do any better with my hair after I hit 20 –
in the portrait, I was growing my hair out from a crazy Rocky Horror Picture
Show Magenta kind of perm, and after straightening it – since it was straight
on top and frizzy at the ends – it was flat at the top and thick and wide at
the bottom, very triangular, and I appeared to be wearing a wedge of cheese on
my head.
Finally, FINALLY!!, in the mid-80s, after many pleas by
Leroy and Lucy#1 for us to have our picture taken professionally again, Colene
and I took a photo in which we were gorgeous! Yes, 100% fabulously, stunningly,
gorgeous. No horrible hairstyles. No braces. No bizzarro clothing. We had
finally grown up and we were lookin’ GOOD, baby! Behold the beauty, y’all:
Yowza! Really, there are not enough superlatives to
describe how great we (thought we) looked here. Colene and I loved this photo!
Woo hoo! A good likeness at last. We had this lovely photo framed and gave it to
Leroy and Lucy#1 as a combined Mother’s/Father’s Day gift. They loved it! They
hung it on the wall in their living room because they were so proud of their
incredibly beautiful girls.
The photo stayed on the wall until long after Leroy had died,
when Lucy#1 sold the house and moved to another town. She didn’t hang the photo
on her living room wall in the new house because 20 years had gone by and she
had better photos – of her grandchild! – that she wanted to hang instead. The photo of
the Big Ol’ Texas Hair Girls was stored in a closet.
Then, ten or so years later, Lucy#1 had to leave her
house and move in with me. When Colene and I were helping her pack up her
house, Colene’s son found the photo in the closet. He did not recognize us.
(Can you believe that?) We all three laughed long and hard over the photo, and
over how slam-dunk perfect we had thought we were. We propped the photo up on a
dresser in the guest room where it could not be missed and went on packing
boxes.
Later in the day, Lucy#1 came into the guest room and saw
the picture standing at attention in front of her. She asked, “Where did you get
that?” We explained that D had found it in the closet.
Lucy#1 asked, “Where did that come from? Did one of you
store it here?”
“No,” we replied. “This is your photo of us. We gave it
to you and Leroy when y’all lived in Bryan. It used to hang in the living
room.”
And Lucy#1 declared in a firm voice, “I have never seen that
picture before in my life.”
That’s the heartbreaker of dementia. We propped our
Big-Hair selves up on the dresser so Lucy#1 would get a laugh when she came
into the room and saw us, but she didn’t get to enjoy the joke after all. Don’t you just
hate that?
