Family Album by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-11-04T04:30:18+00:00

Chapter 6

Saturday Afternoon

There comes a time in every life when motives no longer matter, when the reasons why something is done, the reasons that drove the doing in the first place, no longer hold the mind or bind the heart. The thoughts that once guided a step to the right instead of the left, determined a response or a dream, bundle together in clusters to be put away with a personality of the past. Gwen had reached that point, when all her reasons deserted her and left her alone in the present, unsure how she got here but unwilling to alter her circumstances.

The children, Jennie and Philip McDuffy, tumbled out of the second-floor apartment at one o'clock, their lunch half in their mouths and half on the kitchen table, as they raced to the beach to get the best spot with their friends before the crowds overwhelmed the pristine sand. Their promptitude on the weekends always made Gwen wonder at their lassitude on school days, but she was glad they were off on their own now, for she needed more and more time alone to think through the things on her mind.

Spread before her on the living room rug, a braided rug in muted blues and greens and reds she had purchased for twenty dollars at a yard sale, were three shoeboxes of photographs and a brown three-ring binder with plastic display pages. Over the last few days she had grown especially conscious of how precious her children were to her, and was thus inspired to lay out their lives in plastic and oils. She dumped the pictures out onto the rug and started sorting them into piles, only two at first, then three. Philip with plump fists and a cowboy hat, sharply focused but with no background, went into the stack on the left, and Jennie with her arms around her brother and a big smile out of focus went into the one on the right.

The piles grew, and when she was finished sorting, Gwen transferred each one to its own shoebox, except for the third, which she put into a paper bag. The next task seemed more appealing to her, for she smiled as she opened the binder and pulled it close to her. Pushing aside the shoebox on the left and the paper bag, Gwen dumped the pictures from the remaining shoebox back onto the rug and again began sorting. This time the underlying principle was obvious; she arranged the pictures by the age of the child therein until she had several unsteady piles. These she then arranged in the display pages, leaving room to write in dates, names, and places, for which she had purchased a white-colored pencil.

Gwen lingered over the last few photographs, taken by Mrs. Alesander only a few weeks earlier when Jennie and Philip had finished the school year with awards for citizenship and science. Gwen stood between them at the bus stop, stiff paper awards blowing out in one hand while they tried to keep hair out of their eyes with the other as Mrs.

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