I Built Our Family Photo Archive For Thirty Years — Then My Sister’s Slideshow Showed Me What Was Missing
PART 1
The first time I realized I had spent thirty years photographing my family out of my own life, my sister was asking me to take more pictures.
Linda had spread birthday plans across her dining table like we were coordinating a small military landing. There were catering menus, a seating list, three versions of a timeline, and a yellow legal pad with MOM — 80 written across the top in red marker.
“Cake comes out at three-fifteen,” she said. “So you’ll want to be near the patio doors by three because the light gets weird after that.”
I looked up from my coffee. “I’ll want to be?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. I just enjoy hearing my labor scheduled in the passive voice.”
Linda ignored that because she had been my older sister for fifty-six years and had developed immunity to most of my jokes.
Mom’s birthday was three weeks away. Linda was hosting in her backyard because she had the bigger deck and the flatter lawn. Forty-two people had said yes, which meant fifty would come. Our mother, Evelyn Holloway, had requested exactly two things: lemon cake and no surprise speeches from people she could not identify without reading glasses.
Linda had responded by planning a slideshow.
“It’s six minutes,” she said, reaching for her laptop. “Not sentimental. Mostly funny.”
“Six minutes is sentimental by family standards.”
“Just watch it.”
She turned the screen toward me and pressed play.
The first picture was Mom in 1989, wearing a yellow cardigan and holding my son when he was six months old. The next was Christmas at our old house. Then a beach rental. Rachel in braces. Linda’s daughter in a soccer uniform. Dad in an apron that said KISS THE COOK, which he wore despite refusing to cook anything except scrambled eggs.
I smiled before I meant to.
The pictures were good.
I knew they were good because I had taken almost all of them.
There was Mom laughing with a paper crown on her head. Dad asleep under a newspaper. Linda dancing at her second wedding. My husband David trying to light a charcoal grill with the expression of a man being personally insulted by fire.
The slideshow moved through three decades of birthdays, graduations, holidays, babies becoming adults, bad haircuts becoming family evidence, and tables that got smaller as people moved away and larger again when they came back with partners.
At minute four, I noticed something.
At minute five, I stopped listening to the music.
When the slideshow ended, Linda said, “Well?”
“How many pictures are there?”
“One hundred eighty-two.”
“How many am I in?”
She frowned. “What?”
“How many pictures am I in?”
“Megan.”
“Humor me.”
Linda scrolled back to the beginning.
We started counting.
There I was at Rachel’s high school graduation, half hidden behind David’s shoulder. There I was at Mom and Dad’s fortieth anniversary because Linda had hired a photographer. There I was at a picnic in 2007, eating potato salad with my eyes closed. There was one family Christmas where I appeared in the mirror behind everyone else.
“Does the mirror count?” Linda asked.
“No.”
“That feels arbitrary.”
“I’m the photographer. I make the rules.”
She gave me a look, then kept scrolling.
Seven.
Out of one hundred eighty-two photographs, I was clearly visible in seven.
The camera strap around my wrist suddenly felt heavier than it had ten minutes earlier.
I had brought my camera to lunch because Linda wanted a current picture of Mom for the opening slide. It sat beside my chair in its black bag, exactly where it always sat when family gathered.
Linda leaned back. “Most of these are yours.”
“I know.”
“So of course you’re not in them.”
I looked at her.
She heard it when she said it.
“That came out wrong.”
“It came out mathematically.”
“Megan, nobody excluded you.”
I looked at the paused screen. Mom was fifty-three in the image, the age I was now. She stood between Linda and Dad with one hand raised because someone had said something that made her laugh.
I had taken that picture.
I remembered the afternoon. I remembered the light. I remembered telling Linda to move two inches left because a porch post looked like it was growing out of her head.
I did not remember where I had stood after I pressed the shutter.
Linda tapped her legal pad. “Okay. We can add more pictures of you.”
“That is not what I’m asking.”
“What are you asking?”
I had no answer yet.
That irritated me.
Linda was good at questions that had boxes beside them. Cake. Chairs. Music. Photos. I was good at the same kind of thing, which was probably why family events always ended with the two of us holding tape, scissors, serving spoons, or somebody’s phone.
She softened her voice. “You know Mom loves the pictures you take.”
“I know.”
“She wants this birthday documented.”
“I know.”
“And you’re the best one to do it.”
There it was again. Not cruel. Not dismissive. Almost flattering.
I looked at the slideshow one more time.
Three decades of proof that I had been present.
Seven photographs proving I had actually been there.
