I come from a line of pretty women. Preserved in glossy photographs, the women in my family could easily be featured in vintage magazines. Some of them actually were. My great aunt was the perfect World War era wife, always keeping pretty while the boys were away. In her photos she is elegantly draped on couches, pearls and curls on full display. My aunt on my mother’s side competed in beauty pageants. In her pictures she flashes an award-winning smile that won her trophies and scholarships. Her cherry lips and narrow waist put her straight through college.
My paternal grandmother modeled throughout her twenties and early thirties. She was stunning, with thick black hair and creamy white skin. In all her pictures she is young, except for one. In that picture she is holding me as a newborn. She died while I was a baby.
Her photo albums are a memorial to the pretty woman I will never know. Her smile is familiar, but I will never hear her voice. I will never laugh at her quiet wit. I will never experience her wisdom. I will never see her wrinkles.
A picture is supposed to say a thousand words, but the pretty women in my family are silent.
When I look in the mirror, I see their faces. I see my grandmother’s celestial nose, her wide smile, her emerald eyes. I see my aunt’s lips, my mother’s rosy cheeks. They tell me I belong with them. But I want more than what I can see in the mirror. Did I inherit their intelligence? Their talents? Their strength?
A picture is supposed to say a thousand words, but the pretty women leave me with unanswered questions.
And I wonder if my legacy will be captured in a photograph. I want to leave behind more than my pictures, shoes, and pearls. But pretty women have a tendency to die too soon, before future generations can know them. And just as I have inherited their faces, perhaps I have inherited this tendency. And perhaps my face will be the next in a line of pretty women who are seen but not remembered.
I think I have already answered the question. At age eleven, I found a box of my grandmother’s shoes, hidden in the closet. I put them on, and the pinch was strangely familiar. I adorned myself in her legacy along with my mother’s pearls. My mother found me digging through her jewelry box, like a miner searching for gold. “You look so pretty!” she said and pulled out the camera. I smiled and took my place.
