Oh Snap!

Sitting there in the exquisitely ornamental frame with the little kickstand, occupying its space on the small walnut desk, glinting in a late afternoon shaft of sunlight, under a starburst of dust mites returning from orbit, was a photo. There was golden magic in that frozen moment, captured forever in gelatin silver, her with the infectious smile and a knowing look in her eyes, him with a roguish grin, both bemused and besotted with devotion, their chemistry palpable even after 75 years.

I picked it up and inspected the fillegree’d metal and leaded glass. The picture was taken in the field of a local farm —at least Mi’um had always said as much— and you could see the crystal clear skies of August in it. There was a house in the background with Victorian wraparound porch as ornately dressed as the frame in my hands, with intricate lattice work that mimicked the brass ornament I held. 

On the backside of the frame, something caught at the tip of my finger —the felt on the back of the frame peeling up and about to run. At the bottom of the frame there was a small leg that would swing out and keep the photo upright when not utilized for wall art. It was this leg that had drawn my attention. Well loved to the point of dilapidation, the hinge seemed loose and fragile and being a young man of optimism and integrity I thought I should expend the effort to fix it.

I had earlier found the remnants of a little workshop in the single bay garage around the side of my grandmother’s house; armed with the the picture and its frame, I sojourned myself to its gloomy embrace. With the doors stuck to the point of requiring a sturdy shoulder to induce movement, I gained an uneasy entry and settling into workbench at the back of that little garage, I appraised the job at hand. In order to fix the leg I only needed to knock the pin out and find something to replace it, another soft brass pin or bolt would fit the bill but who knows what I would be able to find.

A few minutes were spent ascertaining the availability of the tools and parts and I then set to the task, the first act of which necessitated the disassembly of the frame. Needing to remove the glass lest it shattered during the process, it was easy enough to pop the pin out with a small screwdriver and then pry the cardboard backer off. Lastly, two little twist pins actuated the release of its held treasures. The backing paper and the photo begrudgingly deigned its removal and with deeper inspection revealed a double thickness —curiously the photo’s weight was twice the expected heft as well. Apparently there was another photo stuck to the back of the outward facing keepsake… along with a yellowed piece of note paper, complete with a scribbled script, in Italian maybe? The only words I could make out were in the closing: “Con Amore, Kermit”.

“Who the fuck is Kermit, Mi’um?” I muttered into the still stuck air. “What have you been hiding from us?”

Looking closer at the scrawled note, I could get a sense of a familiarity within the script, even though I could neither make out the characters nor the meaning with which they were assembled. But I had no idea what was said, specifically. So I snapped a photo and decided to phone a friend.

“Hello?” uncurled the sultry voice of Aleksa, on the other end of the line.

“Hey there, I’m gonna send you a photo, ok?”

“Hey there Bri,” she responded amicably. “Anything I should know?”

“Naw, just found something and needed your translating ability.” I stated.

“K. Send it over.”

I did. The response I got back spoke volumes. The text read:

I love you, I miss you. 

I want to be in you. 

Like our baby.

With Love, Kermit

…in fucking Italian!

“You trixie thing, I didn't know you spoke Italian…"

That explains the clean cut look —and the black shirt and tie, the black hat and pants and the tall shiny boots? “What the shit Mi’um.” I grummled when I read it. “In love with a fascist? Gatdam! Life sometimes…”

Right, I remember now! I was visiting her one long childhood summer month years ago and had answered the door for a man I did not know. I looked up at him briefly before she had bustled over and shoo’d me away. Glancing back as I made my way into the kitchen I saw tears rolling down her cheek and he grasped her hand quite tenderly. Looking at me peering from around the door jamb I saw him wink and there was a familiar look to his eye. My grandmother had followed his gaze and bade me to retreat further into the kitchen. “Git you!” she scolded, following me and closing the door.

Later that day she told me that he was a salesman and to not answer the door for strangers. Then she taught me how to use the deadbolt and where the peephole was. In the brown shag carpeted foyer of the little yellow ranch house they lived in, miles from the nearest town, I wondered for all of 5 minutes about the stranger, before moving onto the pressing summer business at hand, staying cool and well fed. 

In hindsight, it was a very strange beat for a vacuum or bible hawk. 

Back in the dusty dirty workshop behind my dead grandmother’s house, I looked at the photo in my hand. Starring with shrinking disbelief, I looked closer at the torso of the Italian —judging by his mustache and fez, although I suppose he could have easily been Vichy French or a Czech partisan or something— I could see something in his eyes… or someone rather, my father! In addition to his piercing blue eyes, there were his ears and chin too, the only thing that was missing was this continental beak, my father's replaced instead with Miriam’s button affair. All quite unsettling, but what really took me by storm was the uncomfortable resemblance to my father’s (and therefore my!) assemblage of features.

He, just inside the house, completely unsuspecting of this photographic tsunami approaching; just inside the foyer, blissfully ignorant, sifting through his dead mother’s most cherished possessions. A man determining the items’ fate like Saint Peter at the gates judging souls. He was fully immersed in a world of sorrow, painfully sorting the meaning of her untidy life and wrestling his own mortality. All the while I was fighting this emotional Gojira. He, blissfully unaware that his mother was a two-timing fascist sympathizer… at the very least.

He must never know.

“I’ll never tell him that’s for fucking sure. That’s all there is to it”, I said to myself, mostly, but also to the grime and spiders that inhabited that dank little garage.

There simply was no need to add to the inconsolable grief at losing his mother; compounding it with the loss of a father too would be devastation on par with firebombing Tokyo. Mi’um’s death a too fresh wound, a phoned-in surprise merely a week ago, now buttressed by this unbearable knowledge.

And what about Grampy! 

“Oh my god, what’ll I do?” I muttered into that little garage, a confessional of forbidden love, now known only to me. 

“…not today.” Not ever.