I am two and a half in the formal, black and white photograph. The portrait is of me only. There is another one, taken at the same time, of my mother and me, but the one I’ll describe is only of me. I stand behind the mahogany and tooled leather round coffee table in our living room of the time. I think that was in Arlington, Virginia and my father was in the Navy. I am not looking into the camera and I am not smiling. My pale blonde hair is carefully arranged with a side part, bangs and a ribbon. I wear a white dotted swiss dress with puffed sleeves. I have a locket around my neck. I don’t remember owning or ever wearing this locket so I wonder if it belonged to me. I do not remember the photo session, only what I have been told about it.
These two photographs hung in my parents’ bedroom until my mother’s death 68 years later. My mother told a story about this picture. She and the photographer told me not to touch the coffee table. In the picture you can see that one or two pudgy fingers have managed to attach themselves to the side of the table. I will hardly ever do exactly what my parents want me to do. I won’t veer into juvenile delinquency as my next brother does. But I will almost always rebel, always finger the coffee table in my own way. I will deviate in small ways from the expectations of a child in a Fairfield County, Connecticut upbringing by doing or not doing what my mother thinks is proper. I will refuse to have a debut, even though all of my friends have them. I tell her and my grandmother that I “came out” 17 years earlier and see no reason to come out again. I will not go to Sweet Briar College, the glorified finishing school my mother chooses. I will marry the man she adores, but then divorce him and marry two others of whom she disapproves.
In the second picture, again black and white, my hands are folded in my lap. This is another formal portrait, done by a prominent Greenwich photographer of the time. I am 16, wearing an apple green chiffon dress with pink cloth roses pinned to the bosom of the dress. It is a beautiful dress, one of the prettiest I ever owned. The bodice is gathered in little folds from the shoulders and the waist to the cloth roses. I wear my mother’s pearl and diamond earrings but no other jewelry. I am looking above the camera off to the side although the pose is not quite a profile. I do not smile. My hair, darker now, but still blonde, is again, carefully arranged with a side part. My waist is small, my arms and neckline bare. I am perhaps as beautiful as I will ever be. The photograph is not my idea. It’s a recording of a lovely teenaged girl, a brag piece, commissioned by my mother. She adopts the apple green dress a few years later, removes the roses and wears her diamond pin in their place.
Both my grandmother and my mother are present for the portrait session. They do not provide suggestions for poses other than to suggest that I smile. The photographer tells them that smiles don’t wear well over time.
I am in private school. I’m a good student and expect to go to college. I have boyfriends although not a steady one. I like boys but am not nearly as popular as my best friend. I’m not as confident as I look in the picture. I feel awkward and too big for a girl. I’m 5 feet 9 inches tall. I perspire a lot in social situations. I go to dances but am not a confident dancer. I go to a party at my mother’s best friend’s house and fall in love with her oldest son’s best friend, a Jewish boy a year older than I am. Neither his parents nor mine approve, but the romantic feelings last long enough so that I dated him after my first divorce. Ultimately, he was not for me.
I am 68 in the portrait my husband has commissioned. I want this painting and I want to present myself as the woman I have fought hard to become, a woman I am proud of and whose looks and personality are mine. The artist asks me to choose photographs and paintings I like of women whose look and pose appeal to me. I pick a head shot of a woman about my age whose hair disappears off the top of the page. The artist tells me this is a very aggressive pose. I like it. I like my gray hair, my aging body and face. I tell him over and over, don’t pretty me up. Just paint me as I am. In the portrait, I am sitting on our couch, the one I inherited from my grandmother, with our floor-to-ceiling bookshelves behind me. My head is cocked to one side and my hair disappears off the top of the painting. I am looking at the artist, and I am not quite smiling. I am a serious, accomplished, older woman dressed in clothes the artist and I chose together as professional and a little arty, with jewelry given me by my husband, sitting in front of a wall of books (books being some of my best friends). I am satisfied that the artist has captured the real me.
