'Family Portrait Essay\r'

'My great-grandmother, who is ninety-five years old, recently sent me a photograph of herself that I had never seen out front hap. piece cleaning out the attic of her Florida home, she came crosswise a studio portrait she had interpreted about a year before she married my great-grandfather. This portray of my great-grandmother as a twenty-year-old girl and the allegory behind it perplex fascinated me from the moment I began to pack it. The modern woman in the picture has a face that resembles my own in many ways. Her face is a procedure more oval than mine, but the lightly waving brown hair round it is identical. The small, straight nose is the alike modelling I was born with.\r\nMy great-grandmother’s address is closed, yet there is just the slightest trace of a smile on her total lips. I know that if she had smiled, she would have shown the same wide grin and down-curving â€Å"smile lines” that turn up in my own snapshots. The most follow feature in the photo, however, is my great-grandmother’s eyes. They are an exact duplicate of my own large, low brown ones. Her brows are plucked into dilute lines, which are like two draw strokes added to highlight those fine, luminous eyes.\r\nI’ve as well carefully studied the clothing and jewelry in the photograph. Although the photo was taken lxxv years ago, my great-grandmother is wea rally a blouse and beleaguer that could easily be worn today. The blouse is do of heavy eggshell-colored satin and reflects the light in its folds and hollows. It has a turned-down cowl collar and smocking on the shoulders and below the collar. The smocking (tiny rows of gathered material) formulations hand-done. The resound, which covers my great-grandmother’s calves, is straight and made of light wool or flannel. My great-grandmother is wearing silver capitulation earrings. They are about two inches retentive and roughly shield-shaped. On her left carpus is a matching b racelet. My great-grandmother can’t find this bracelet now, despite our having washed-out hours searching through the attic for it. On the third finger of her left hand is a ring with a large, square-cut stone.\r\nThe story behind the picture is as arouse to me as the young woman it captures. Great-Grandmother, who was earning 25 dollars a week as a file clerk, decided to give her mate (my great-grandfather) a picture of herself. She pass near two weeks’ salary on the skirt and blouse, which she bought at a fancy incision store downtown. She borrowed the earrings and bracelet from her older sister, Dorothy. The ring she wore was a present from another young man she was dating at the time. Great-Grandmother spent another chunk of her salary to give birth the portrait photographer for the hand-tinted print in old-fashioned tones of brown and tan.\r\nJust before giving the picture to my great-grandfather, she scrawled at the dismantle left, â€Å"Sincerely, Beat rice.” When I study this picture, I act in many ways. I cypher about the trouble that my great-grandmother went to in commit to impress the young man who was to be my great-grandfather. I laugh when I look at the ring, which was probably worn to enlighten him jealous. I smile at the serious, stately inscription my great-grandmother used at this symbolize of the budding relationship. Sometimes, I am alter with a mixture of pleasure and grief when I look at this stock-still long-ago moment. It is a moment of beauty, of love, andâ€in a wayâ€of my own past.\r\n'