Family Portraits

Stephanie Lee posted some family pictures on her blog the other day, the second one of herself and her two daughters (a.k.a. the "wild ponies") with their dog peeking out from behind. (You can see the photos and read her January 3rd post, entitled "Digital Redemption" here: http://www.stephanielee.typepad.com/). It's a fabulous photo but I had to laugh at her puppy, shyly tucking herself into the frame. It took me back to a day when we had a family portrait taken, many years ago, somewhere in the late 70's.

I don't have the picture in front of me, but here's what I remember: the session got off to a bad start, as far as I was concerned, when the photographer showed up early, before I'd had a chance to curl my hair. As a result, it is dead straight in the photo and clipped back off my face with two barrettes - not a flattering look, let me tell you. It was bad enough that I was still wearing braces but to have to suffer the indignity of being photographed with straight hair, oh the horror. And I think I am wearing a corduroy floral print dress that I thought was the cat's meow back in the day but now makes me sort of wonder what I was thinking. Then my dad said our dog could not be in the photo, in spite of all our protests that he was very much a part of the family, which made my little sister cry so she is rather red-eyed and sad looking in the photo. And one of my brothers is wearing a salmon pink suit (I think they called them "leisure suits" back in those days) with running shoes.

I don't have a scan of that photo and I'm not sure I would post it here if I did, it's that awful - of me and my hair, that is. As I recall, my mother looks quite beautiful in the photo (as she almost always does - my friend Wendy keeps telling me I'm so photogenic but I get that from my mom) and I think my dad and one brother look reasonably good too. Stephanie's post just got me to remembering that day and how even all these years later, I can't quite look at that picture without wanting to both laugh and cry at the absurdity of the whole thing.

Ten years later, we got it right - here's a family picture taken in 1988 that I love and yes, our beloved Duffy was front and centre.