The Memory Box (No. 278, "Reflection")

"Reflection" No. 278, by Tom Wills, New Year's Day 2015.

The Sabre Jet one man-all weather interceptor delivered to me last fall 93 old family photos, mostly black and white; three or four in color.
My uncle, Chick Peters, had kept them in the box of a jet fighter model he'd won as a kid, part of some adventure that sent him on a visit to Washington, D.C.
The box held memories on both the outside and inside.

The box was labeled "Linda," his sister. My mother.
Inside was a trove of great pictures of great-grandparents, aunts, uncles and places far away and long ago.
The family, I don't believe, had a whole lot, yet managed to travel, gather and grow with each other. The smiles are wonderful.

There was one particular photo in the box of my mother making herself up in a mirror. It's one of the few that is dated -- February 1956.  The image is unique in that you can get the whole of her, front in the mirror and back to the camera. Unfortunately half of it is over-exposed. It's imperfect yet still beautiful.

I posted many of the old photos on Facebook and a couple friends suggested that the mirror photo was one that I had to draw. Of course they were right on a couple of levels: I could preserve the image, and in doing so further connect to her life before marriage, kids and passage from this earth.
But it became so much more that that.

I scanned the photo and tried to pull out the details: Wallpaper, items on the vanity table, ruffles in the dress, doll on the dresser. The composition of the photo is perfect. In fact all of the photos in the box are well-composed by those who snapped them decades ago.

Amazingly, one of the few color photos shows my mother in the dress with her prom date. I think Chick said his name was Eddie, and that there's a story there, too. This was before my father came into the Peters household and into later pictures.

The venue looks like the front of W.D. Packard Music Hall in Warren, Ohio, but it might be the old Warren G. Harding High School.
I can imagine that dress set her mom and step-dad back quite a bit, for the time.

I began the drawing shortly before Christmas vacation 2014 and tried to take my time, working to capture the lighting and details while imagining how to best restore the left side of that faded photo. I drew the face in the mirror first, and re-drew that face five or six times. It's not perfect but it's very close, and the paper was starting to give way to the eraser.

I did not use the computer this time to magnify the image. I eyeballed it, held in hand, choosing to make the process the most manual effort possible. This one went straight through me to the paper.

I would imagine that it took her a couple of hours to prep for that dance. You can see various lotions and potions laid out on the vanity table, as she runs the brush through her hair. Sure hope Eddie thought she was worth the effort.

"Reflection" was supposed to be No, 300 but I could not contain it any longer, so it's No. 278. But it's still a milestone of sorts for me, as this is my 150th blog on this web site.
I completed the drawing on New Year's Day, early in the morning, far ahead of schedule. It was the perfect start to a new year for me, as the preceding 365 days had been a little rough.

I'm not going to elaborate here, but you have seen this frame before, and can choose on your own to go back or not.

http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2014/05/no-243-father-of-bride.html

The sleight of hand that I've pulled with this frame, and its new purpose, makes me feel some better about things.

On the airplane box, crossed out, you can see the names Julie and Pam, my cousins.
I promised my cousin Pam Peters Swager that the drawing is for her dad, Uncle Chick, and I'd sent pictures  to her as it progressed.
As for my uncle, he remarried some years ago and moved from Warren to a villa just five minutes from me. I had offered to draw the house he'd built and sold after 40-some years on the West Side but he said the strangest thing: "I don't want a picture of the house. I want to leave those memories here."
That threw me at the time, but I understand it now.

In the alternative I think he will like this picture of his youthful and marvelous sister, who left him too young, too.
It'll wait for him to return from Florida in the spring. And if he doesn't want to haul it around then I know Pam will keep care of it. Maybe she can tell her boys any Aunt Linda stories that she can remember.

I love the drawing. But if I kept it, it would have to be placed into another frame. That big white wedding frame, yeah, I want to leave those memories too.
I'm just satisfied to have preserved the image, which was fading. And I think this is the best way to close a couple of chapters all at once.
The real value to me is in the original photos, which I am keeping all together in that little box.