Mom asked me and my wife to help with Grandma’s move. We prepared for a day of manual labor but had barely lifted one box when Mom mentioned a bin of pictures. Grandma’s pictures. She said I could look through them and take what I wanted. I confirmed this with Grandma. She looked up at me, pleased and serene. Brown eyes like wet sand. She said, Sure.
Moving paused. Mom and Grandma sat on the couch. My wife and I sat on pearl-colored carpet; it looked and felt new, like no one had lived on it. This depressed me, but I persisted. I perused. I flipped through photos of places and faces and, at one point, encountered a stranger.
They were a few months old, pictured alone in a too-large hat, mid-dribble, mid-babble, surely still foreign to language. I turned to Mom and Grandma, showed them, and asked, Who’s this? Together, they said, That’s you. I looked again, unsettled and saddened at my unfamiliarity.
My wife and Mom busied themselves with pictures of another stranger—shots of me from high school with long hair, wearing lip gloss, before I knew who I was, before I knew anything. I focused on pictures of Grandma and Papa from just before he died. Bright-eyed, happy, and in love. Their last cruise. I turned the page. Deck and sky. Water.
Grandma stood from the couch. She asked, What’s that there? She pointed at the album in my lap, open to a series of oceanic photos taken with a disposable camera. The images were surprisingly clear and so vividly blue that the paper seemed wet. She said, I thought I saw something there…something you don’t know about…something I could show you. I flipped back a page, then another, again. Rippling pages, nautical miles. Nothing else. She sat back down, disoriented and discouraged. I plunged again to be sure, but resurfaced with nothing. I closed the album, dissatisfied, and preoccupied myself with other times. My parents’ wedding. The summer I learned to swim.
Later, photos spilled from our arms as we left. My wife carried my baby pictures to the car, smiling to herself. I held my loved ones in their prime, put them in the back seat, and resisted the urge to strap them in. Driving home, I worked against the high tide of distress—I hadn’t known myself. Who’s this? That’s you.
The recollection of Grandma’s lost memory floated nearer the closer we got to home. What’s that there? I hoped she’d find it again, that something—catch it fresh, writhing, alive—and show me. But it was gone, away, far out at sea, somewhere I didn’t know about, somewhere I couldn’t see.
