With Smudge In Yard

“Sunday Morning” featured a piece about “Our Town” last week. It’s reportedly the most produced play in America, maybe because it calls for so little scenery, but more likely because it touches on that sinking feeling we all get sometimes that we are failing to “realize life while (we) live it,” that we aren’t appreciating who and what we have while we have them. Then the phone rings, the incoming email dings, and we forget again.

This positive image from a rare glass negative came from a friend’s family collection. It traveled over time to her without a chip, but also without a name or date or anything about the forgotten relatives who owned it. Studying the carving on the rocker, the little mat underneath, the dog’s round metal tag, the name plates by the screen door, the rooms of hidden objects behind, I think these were somebody’s “clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths …” These were somebody’s ordinary and everyday, and maybe they appreciated them, and maybe they didn’t, and now they’re all gone, all save this photo.

He wouldn’t stop moving for the picture. They must have expected as much — the woman in white brought a treat to bribe him during the long exposure, ruining the symmetry of her puffed sleeves to offer it at the crucial moment. Still, in the photo, he’s a fuzzy blur of a dog, and her hand’s blurry too, a strange bit of movement in an image so carefully arranged and still.

It’s hard to tell how the people are related. Their ages, their resemblances reveal no definitive answer. But we know how they felt about their dog, front row, center. We know how the woman in black beside him, only partially containing her smile, felt.