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“Family”

Charlotte meandered to the back of the house. She knew she was going to the back room where she kept her family photo albums, but she never directly went towards that end of the house. She stopped to dust off the edges of the kitchen countertops, then rearranged the top of her dining room table. She looked at the book club edition hardcovers which lined her bookshelves thinking that she’d never read half of them, much less get back to the ones that she’d already read. It might be a good idea to try to sell them, she thought. She shook her head and smiled. George always liked the look of the matching leather bound books; she would find more of those to decorate her living room.

In the hallway, she straightened the paintings and admired her children from long ago. They smiled so brightly at her; Donald, her oldest, had always had bright white, straight teeth. In his fourth grade school picture, he wore a brown spring jacket with a red shirt. It was a lucky shirt to him and he wanted to wear it every day; Charlotte wondered if he remembered it at all. She probably had it in the basement with the rest of her children’s relics. Now he was a successful lawyer with a sweet wife and three beautiful children.

Eric came just a year after Donald; it was a quick and painless pregnancy. He was the explorer of the family, always getting into what was forbidden to him, always curiously taking apart toys and trying to reassemble them. She wondered why he went into activism. She was proud of her son who was always seeking to save the world, but he would have been a natural astronaut. He also had a successful family and brought the most adorable grandson into her life; he was just like his father. In the photograph in front of her now, Eric was stationed on top of a rock, completely radiant having conquered his own small island.

Gina never smiled in pictures and this one framed in gold of her holding hands with her father was no exception. Charlotte always had to smile at Gina’s pictures, because while she always looked so sullen and moody in them, she was such a bright, enthusiastic child. Gina was in Japan with her husband teaching English to younger children. Though Charlotte could never find herself more proud of one child over any of her others, the difference that Gina and Eric were making in the world made her indefinitely admirable. They truly had their father’s traits - benevolent, kind, and forgiving. Charlotte missed her terribly.

The last photograph in the hallway before Charlotte reached the furthest room showed a small girl sitting on Santa’s lap beaming. This one, her youngest, was the closest to home still. She had the fondest relationship with her father; when he died, Charlotte believed Eve stayed close to home because she was so distraught. Now, years later, she still fought to stay close despite rising prices in the area. Charlotte loved her youngest no more or less than her other children, but Eve worried her. She hadn’t had a boyfriend in ages and shied away from any motherly talk in that direction. Charlotte just wanted what was best for her children and Eve didn’t seem particularly happy to her. Perhaps she was wrong.

She sat down on the bed in the bedroom and sighed. It was meant to be a guest bedroom, but she rarely had guests; her children visited once or twice a year - with the exception of Eve, of course, who visited more often, but lived too close to stay in the guest room - and as her family got older they no longer wanted to make the trip to visit. Charlotte hadn’t seen her sister since Eve graduated high school and her husband’s family contacted her less and less every year since his death. On days like this one she found herself coming to the guest bedroom to straighten up, look through the old photographs, or just exist.

The closet held past dreams and former anxieties. With the big blue vinyl book on her lap, Charlotte revisited the past. This one was specifically special to her. She seldomly brought it out, especially not when her sons were visiting with their children and wanted to revisit their parents’ past. It was too much for her to fall into emotional outbreaks in front of her family. Now, however, she had the secrecy of locked doors and loneliness.

This book brought her through her life with her husband. The children weren’t in it except at their births; they soon after earned their own books. She saw him from the photos his mother gave her after their wedding through their four children, a dramatic mid-life crisis, and the last days of his life. She held her breath in the final pages and let the tears flow quietly but surely.