Rue St. Rustique by Eugène Atget

Rue St. Rustique by Eugène Atget

or The Nearly Coherent Thoughts of a Girl in an Art Museum

I have been on this street before, is what I think when it first catches my attention, and I pause to look closer.

Is it the Netherlands, or Germany, Belgium, France, Austria?

How can they be so separate and distinct, yet sit so closely to each other, such tight neighbors on their tiny street section of the world. Each country like these homes, piled and placed right next to each other the way my daughter builds with Legos. As if claustrophobia is a made up, imaginary thing existing only in the world of adults.

I finally check the tag next to the photo, and see that it was taken in 1922, two years after my grandmother was born. The photo was printed in 1957, a year after my father was born.

My grandmother passed away two weeks ago. She was 99 years, 5 months, and 28 days old.

My dad, once her little baby boy, is now grandpa to my own world building, Lego loving children.

But it wasn't that long ago that I was walking down streets like this in Europe, exploring tiny pockets of silence and the past, one block over from billboards advertising new smartphones, and the jumble and rush of commuters hurrying to the train. One block over, in these shadows, it is always quiet.

Somewhere, in this envelope, my grandmother is only two years old. She is sitting on her mother's lap, unaware that she will someday graduate from Northwestern University with a degree in mathematics, that she will live all over the world, that she will marry a man she had known since kindergarten, and then be a widow for twenty-two years.

And while this thirty-four-year old photo was being developed, somewhere across the ocean, my one-year-old father is moving across the room toward her, calling, "Mommy!"

I stand here in the museum looking at this ninety-eight-year-old photo, not checking my watch, not checking to see if it is past time I returned home to children who will rush to the door, to children who need me. I stand here, remembering when I stood on those streets, and somewhere across the country, right now, my dad is pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, whispering, "Mom..."

--

I found this in my poetry notebook from last fall.  I hadn't thought much of it at the time, not impressed at all by what I had written.  When I came across it again a few days ago, maybe because of the loneliness I'm currently feeling so much of, maybe because we just met with all the family for her memorial service, maybe because the days are getting cooler and shorter, it finally struck a chord with me.  This is my ekphrastic poem, that never really made it into a poem, but let's call it some kind of prose. 

Based on this photo, by Eugène Atget:

Eugène Atget, Rue St. Rustique