On Seeing The Picture

On Seeing The Picture I am to the far right, standing with my hands behind me, a half-smile concealing the emptiness. The rest of the nuclear family is contained to my left, my mother's back to me, her beehive hairdo and smart green pantsuit turned toward the others, the siblings...my father. The blue Impala rests itself on the pavement behind us, so many journeys already taken, so few left to take. The smell of Salems fills my senses. It is raining now, so hard my mother sticks her head out the side window in s desperate attempt to give my father direction. My sister is crying in the front seat: I am not sure why. Perhaps to ask the rain to stop or maybe with the hope that the parents will make a truce, call it quits on the fighting, get us safely somewhere. I can't remember. There are too many can't remembers in these long days since my children grew up and left home. The house too quiet, the impulse to make a loud noise which gets reduced to an occasional throwing up of arms,a long stream of expletives that can't mask the loneliness nor the sense of wonder. These posts of pictures from long ago stir things up:a blender full of hate and love, retreat and fight: the brim full of mortality.