Tag Archives: Schirfs

My portrait

I found this portrait on my computer the other day. An online acquaintance drew it in 1998 based on a scan of a portrait photo taken of my brother and me in the late 1980s or 1990s at a Sears store in San Antonio, Texas. The original photo is from a different era in my life, and the artist has never met me face to face. It’s a wonderful work, and for many years I displayed it on my Web site. I removed it primarily because I thought it might appear that I am claiming I look like that now. (I don’t.)

portrait
diane-virgil portrait

From the perspective of 2006, I don’t recognized the woman in the portrait. It is not simply that she is younger, fresher, more innocent, less jaded than I am. It is not that she looks a little shyer, a little more hesitant, a little less confident. It is all that, but it is also more, more than I can probably see or sense. What strikes me most, beyond her reserve, is how happy she seems; her smile is calm, warm, open, and genuine.

I do not think I have ever felt that way as an adult. At the time, I worked at a job that was tedious, meaningless, and draining in an environment that was difficult and without intellect, heart, or spirit. I tried repeatedly to escape, but each failed attempt reminded me that no one elsewhere wanted me and that my chances were small and stagnant. No one could see my potential, nor could I persuade anyone of it. My apartment was small, poorly maintained, and neglected, and was neither a refuge or a home except in the most basic sense. I was not in love and had long ago given up on the idea that I ever would be, or could be.I was existing, not living, and was miserable in that existence.

I do not see any of that in the portrait. I see someone who was, or who has become, a stranger to the person I am today. I could wish I still had her youth and freshness and especially of the openness and optimism that still lurk in her eyes, underneath the guardedness.

But they are gone, and I do not think that they will return.

Easter memories

Easter Sunday, 1960s
Easter Sunday, 1965

As a young girl, I engaged in what is surely a quaint, discontinued custom (or perhaps not?) of getting a new, light, springy dress to wear to church on Easter. I also had two straw hats; one was blue and one was white or pink, if I remember correctly. They were uncomfortable, hot, and scratchy, but I thought I looked elegant in them. I looked forward to having a reason to wear such a hat.

My favourite Easter dress, or the only one I remember, was solid pink with plain lines. It was very comfortable and simple. It came to a sad end. A long time afterward, while we were out driving around, I found some chlorine bleach in the car and accidentally spilled some on the dress, creating instant white blotches. It was a moment I agonised over long after, wishing I could take it back — partly at the loss of the dress, and partly because I felt it must have upset my poor mother as much as me.

On Easter, as on birthdays, we used to sit at the kitchen table and pose for a photo with our filled-up Easter baskets. Mine had broad bands of straw in natural, blue, dark pink, and yellow — again if I remember correctly — and had a handle I’d tie bows and other things to. Virgil’s was smaller, had narrower colored bands, and had no handle. We both had had our baskets for as long as I could remember — that is, I don’t remember acquiring them. They were kept in my closet the rest of the year, along with colored plastic eggs which, at Easter, would be placed in the baskets empty and found the next morning filled with jelly beans or M&Ms.

I associate the baskets and the eggs strongly with the happier aspects of my childhood, which made them a little magical and mysterious somehow. Knowing now that they were just things that were bought at the store in the plaza across the highway has diminished the emotional resonance but little. I sometimes think about whether today’s kids have things that they feel the same sense of wonder about, or are they all so in tune with advertising, marketing, and shopping that every childhood belonging is a mere object with no emotional meaning.

When my dad had to move out finally and we had to decide what to keep and what to get rid of, I thought about saving the baskets and plastic eggs. But space did not allow me to, and to this day I wonder if the actual objects would help me preserve the memory and the feelings any better than I have — if I would be able to look at them now and remember those Easter Sundays and how I felt then. I do not know.