A longing for the Dad in the photo

The Boston Globe

June 19, 2011

Usually, I remember when a picture was taken, the before and the after, and always, always, the why. Because it was a holiday. Because we were on vacation. Because my grandmothers were visiting. Because my father, Larry Curtin, had a new roll of film.

Not this picture, though. There is no before and after in my memory. I know where it was shot: 9 Davis Road in Randolph, the house where I grew up, a small Cape that my parents bought for $10,900 on a GI loan when I was 7.

I recognize the living room, the drapes from Nobrega's, the rug I vacuumed every Saturday, the flowery chair with the upholstery nails where I sat and had my first communion pictures taken.

But who took this picture of my father and why? Where was I? And was my father, really, ever this young?

I found it on my computer, in a file labeled ``Dad'' and posted it on Facebook in honor of Father's Day. Facebook users posted our mothers' photos for Mother's Day; now it's our dads' turn.

I posted it, then spent the morning going back to it, inspecting it, studying the cleft in my father's chin, the space between his teeth, his hands that could fix anything, his wedding band, which, years later, fingers swollen with age, he had to have cut off.

I would have seen this picture when I was a child and my father set up his projector and showed slides on a white sheet draped over the upstairs railing, which he did regularly. And I would have seen it again when I converted it to digital.

But it felt new. It felt like something I had never seen before.

I wish it were video. I wish I could watch and hear what was going on, what prompted my father, who was always standing behind the camera, to sit on the floor and pose for this shot. I wish I could reach into the photo and touch his whiskers, hold his hand, feel his warmth. I wish there were time travel.

Because, right here in this shot, is the father I grew up with, the one I missed even when he was living. This is the father who bought me a used two-wheeler, scraped it down to the metal and painted it green and then taught me to ride, holding the seat, running behind me, shouting, ``Keep going! You're doing it!'' until I was.

This is the father who took me for all of my polio shots and never yelled at me when I cried. And I always cried.

This is the father who rode the Rocket ride with me at Paragon Park, over and over, though it made him dizzy. Who brought me into Boston to see every Audie Murphy cowboy and war film ever made, but who liked three-handkerchiefs movies, too, like ``Imitation of Life.''

He had curly black hair and dark green eyes and every time it was just the two of us together, people would look at me, blonde and blue-eyed, and say to him, ``where did you get her?''

And he would put his arm around me and tell the person, ``she looks just like her mother.'' Then he would turn to me and smile, his two front teeth big with a space between them exactly like mine.

My father was still in his 30s when a dentist pulled his teeth. First the top. Then the bottom. It was long before implants and root canals. His new teeth were perfect. No front teeth bigger than the rest and no space between them. A perfect smile for all the photos ever after.

But it is this photo that tells the truth, that captures him. It doesn't bring back a specific moment, but it brings back years, good years, when everyone was young and life brimmed with possibility.