In a hallway in my house there is a Picture gallery. About forty framed photographs line both sides of the walls. The sizes of these pictures range from four by four inches up to perhaps twelve by fourteen. I walk through this hallway numerous times every day. The pictures were first hung two or three years ago when we had some redecorating done.

These pictures are the Family. My wife and I are somehow related to all these people. I pause sometimes in this hallway and realize that there is indeed a panorama here and that nothing is more important than family. Here is the past and the future. There are great grandparents here who never were alive in my day and there are grandchildren who will live long after me. We have a common bond: we are family.

I can see a banker, an artist, a school teacher, a sports writer, a salesman, a farmer, a doctor, and school children of all ages. I look at these pictures and see deaths and divorces and tragedies that affect people everywhere. But these people are a special branch of mankind. They are the Family. Sometimes some of them speak to me as I pass through this hallway.

“Son”.

That’s my dad’s voice. Mom and Dad are together in a 10 by 12 frame. Dad looks grim; I think he had recently acquired his new teeth. His hair is black and he’s probably in his early fifties. Mother’s face bears a tentative smile and her hair, too, is dark. Mother died at ninety one, Dad at seventy. That’s the way it is with men and women. I always felt they loved me. I give a good look at their eyes and move on.

Sometimes I hear a cry as I pass through this hallway. This is a cry of despair, of great sadness, a cry of the end of life, of the end of the world. The cry is from my wife’s sister who died young and left three daughters and a husband who loved her. There are photos of her as a child and as an adult. I rarely hear this cry and I’m glad. I move on.

“Herbert, come here.”

That voice booms and never speaks any other way. The voice is rich, vibrant, and sounds young although it comes from a frail, white haired old man. This man was the head of the clan on my wife’s side of the family. There was no doubt about his being the leader. He owned the bank in their little East Texas town and he was always turned to for advice, and sometimes money. To my wife, he was “Uncle Earl.” He was a likeable guy and I’m sure he was the most conservative man in Texas. There he is, in a white shirt and dark tie, standing outside his home with about thirty relatives at the annual Thanksgiving Day family reunion. It was a classic tradition. Many of the family members were scattered throughout East Texas and Louisiana and we all looked forward to driving to Uncle Earl’s house on Thanksgiving. From the size of the children, I would judge this picture to be almost twenty five years old. Uncle Earl was one of those people you couldn’t imagine being dead; he no doubt would live forever. But he died, and his brothers and sisters began to die, and the clan drifted apart.

“Hey, Pops, are you ready to go to the game?”

That’s my older son. I see him often and we like to go to the basketball games together. The photo I usually look at is of the Vietnam War era. Rick is dressed in his army uniform with brass buttons and ribbons and he has a far too solemn look. He wouldn’t give us a picture of himself in his army uniform until he returned to the States and was discharged. Somehow, he thought the taking of his picture before he left the army would bring bad luck., that it would be his last picture before he was shot and killed. It was hard for Mom and “Pops” to understand.

“Hey, Grandpa!”

There is always a torrent of words. Grandpa will you do this for me., will you do that for me. She’s twenty years old, attending the University, and bubbling over with life. I look at a picture of a little girl in Junior High and then at a large, beautiful portrait of a now grown up young woman.

One night there was a slight thud in the hallway. I didn’t get out of bed to investigate at the time, but the next morning I discovered that one of the pictures had broken away from its hanging and had plunged to the carpeted floor. This was my younger son, There was great mischief in his eyes and he smiled knowingly. He had a burr haircut like little boys used to wear and I figured he wanted to get my attention by falling to the floor.

“Daddee!

This will be a cry from my daughter. I glance at several pictures of her in this hallway. She always sounds the same to me and I can not tell from which picture the words emerge. One of her childhood pictures, though, reminds me of the times I used to read fairy tales to her, and this is the picture at which I usually stare.

One picture, above all the others, tears at my heart and fills me with a bewildering array of emotions. A little girl, about five years old, is seated with her two brothers, ages perhaps three and one. These are my children and I feel immensely proud. The look of innocense upon their faces is beyond belief, and the expressions on their faces, their individual looks, are what I find in them now, forty years later. There is no doubt who they are. In them I see my immortality. They don’t talk to me, but maybe they join in with the faint giggling I can sometimes hear at night from the many pictures of our seven grandchildren.

Of course, I told my wife about hearing the pictures. After all, she hung these pictures, and she knows all about the people.

“Can you hear them? Can you really hear them?” she teased.

“Yes, I can hear them..” I replied. “I can hear them all when I try. ”

By
Herb Gentry