Omi, O My!

I was sitting at the table in the kitchen of the Big House (my humorous name for my sister's place; I live in the Guest House on their property), cooking, waiting for the stuff baking in the oven to finish, when my eye was drawn to this old photo portrait of my grandmother as a baby in the living room. Well, the table is not exactly in the kitchen; it is in one of those liminal spaces that stand between the kitchen and the living room, not too well defined: "It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!" I suddenly thought I really needed to get a photo of it for the Family Archives, and no sooner said than done: I snapped three shots of it, of which this is the best.

I don't exactly remember ever seeing it hung at Omi's house, though if it was it was probably in the guest bedroom, a private space that we were seldom allowed into as it was out of the line of sight of her kitchen table, where she or our mother could keep an eye on us pretty much throughout the whole house while they would play cards or dominos and discuss the family and the whole wide world, while we might be playing with the box of old spools and clothespins she kept for us. I imagine the picture belonged to Omama, our great-grandmother, and only came to Omi when she passed away. Did Omi ever hang it up herself? I can't really say myself for sure.

It came to my father when they finally had to shut down the house on Cottage Street and move Omi first into an apartment and then into a nursing home. I can't say that Pop was a very sentimental man, and he was certainly no museum curator. The portrait sat wrapped in a garbage bag at the bottom of his closet for the longest time, until he himself passed away. It came to my sister Susan when we closed down the house on Loop Drive, and she had a little restoration done (yes, it was in even worse shape than it is now) and hung it in her house.

I could never, as a child, have imagined Omi as a little girl. To me she was immortally old. But here she is in the earliest years of the 20th Century, bright-eyed and beautifully dressed, ribbons in her hair. It is curious to ponder that, when I entered the world, she was just about as old as I am now, or that she lives on in so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many who never knew her but whose lives she has impacted in so many untold and even unguessable ways. Or that my recently born grandneice Julia may wonder one day about her ancestry, and what will be remembered of Omi by then.