Triptych ~

\‘trip-(,)tik\ – noun – from the Greek
A picture or carving in three panels, side by side

A few years ago I began to gather old black and white photos of my family.

My little house has no fireplace, so my piano is my mantle, and I’ve gathered quite a collection.

My Scottish great-grandmother, the preacher from Oklahoma, my mom, my dad as chubby-cheeked toddlers. The great-grandfathers, the one who played catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, the one who went to sea to rescue the shipwrecked. The grandmother who taught me to play piano, the grandpa who was a proud Northwest logger, who I know only from a scratchy piece of 8mm film where he is tossing me in his arms. My nana and pa, strolling down an avenue in the 40s like a couple ‘a swells.

My own family, my parents, my siblings, we’re a small bunch, we’re a bit scattered. My parents each had only one sibling. I’ve got an aunt in Florida somewhere, I think, and a few random cousins who are essentially strangers to me. Family reunions when I was young were, well, not so much reunions as the occasional afternoon picnic where we’d play lousy croquet and I’d do my best to dodge grandma’s three-bean salad. She was a little heavy-handed with the vinegar.

Every once in awhile when I feel envious of big families with extensions that still reach far and wide, I glance at this gallery on my piano for a booster shot of belonging. Connection. Where I come from. My people.

Scattered around my house I’ve placed a few other black and whites I have come to treasure. Photographs of my two older sisters and myself. My parents were in full-Kodak mode for several years, and they did a terrific job of getting the three of us to pose together, side by side.

Little girls in Easter dresses with bonnets. I enlarged this photo some time back only to discover that it wasn’t my petticoat peeking out from beneath my pale dress, no, that was a loaded diaper. Later on we pose again, a little more grown up, bonnets exchanged for white gloves and patent-leather purses. Mom was our seamstress, letting us pick out a favorite color of matching-patterned fabric. Greens, pinks, lavenders. Another shows the three of us sitting stagger-staired on the front porch of a grand old house, bare arms and sunsuits, another with my sisters on tricycles, me walking just ahead of them with shoulders and head held high, as if I had appointed myself grand marshal of our sister parade. We show up again, all tom-boyed out in shorts and sweatshirts, holding our fishing poles and showing off fresh-caught lake trout (reeled in, no doubt, by daddy).

The flashbulb stopped popping after a handful of years, at least these triptych poses came to an end, which is a good thing, since, you know, the seventies were not a photogenic time.

We shared a bedroom growing up. I look at that 10x12 room now and can’t imagine how we survived such close quarters. My amazement is tempered by the fact that I was the slob, so my sisters had to bear the most in terms of their unfortunate roommate situation. (Now is a good time to mention that I also have a baby brother. He didn’t make the girls-only photo-shoots, but he got his own room for 20-some years, so that seems like a decent trade-off). Anyway, we shared that space, the three of us, until a cracker-box college dorm room or an available apartment offered the first little taste of privacy.

And private we all became, for years. Each pursuing our own bit of dream, or simply walking the path that unfolded in front of us when dreams seemed elusive or still in-the-making. I don’t know what other sisters do, what they talk about, I just know that we were never the kind to shop or giggle or whisper secrets, we didn’t talk about shoes or boys or clothes. We met up here and there, stayed in touch a bit, came together now and again for children and the bigger holidays, but for the most part, our paths diverged.

We stayed in that place of divergence until just a handful of years ago, when, I don’t know what, or who, or even how, really, I just know that we each saw to it, in our own small way, to draw our paths together again.

There have been no “Timmy and Lassie” moments, no racing into one another’s embrace after years of separation. Our reconnecting has been slow, stumbling, stammering, and yet, marked by intentionality. It’s not so difficult. A phone call made. A phone call returned. An email sent and replied to. An old-fashioned note-card and a postage stamp. The remembering, the acknowledgement of a birthday, an appointment, a previous conversation. An ear to listen to a bit of worry, a bit of gladness, a bit of the quirky or mundane that makes up a day. A touch of teasing, laughter. A cup of coffee. A little something picked up here or there to say, “I was here, or there, and I thought of you”.

Along the way, we are learning who one another are. And we’re forgiving one another for living too many years holding tight to who we thought we were when we shared that small room. The bossy one, the flake, the crybaby. The images of one another’s best and worst still run in our memories, but the images are softened and mellowed by time, grace and understanding. We’re allowing for one another’s “becoming”.

It’s not all “Hallmark”. We have the capacity to annoy one another, to frustrate, we know where the bright red “PUSH” buttons are for each other. There are days one sister reminds me that I was the one who pushed her off a ledge onto the cement patio when she was 5 years old. It was an accident, I swear. Years of living our private lives left each of us with a streak of independence and will that could be described as, oh, maybe, ferocious. So, this coming together, it takes awhile.

I’m not trying to make up for time that feels lost; I just don’t want to lose any more of the time that I get.

I’ve discovered at this place where our paths are coming together again, that I am so grateful to have my sisters with me. I’ve missed them. Now, when there is an ache that needs some balm, a story that needs to be heard outside my own head, it occurs to me to seek out a sister. A hand on an arm, a look in the eye. A familiar voice from miles away. And its because of our history that it bears such sweet weight to have their companionship as we navigate this road through whatever lies ahead… the needs of our mother, the needs of our own lives.

I look at these photos, those little girls in Easter bonnets, sitting on the sunny porch, riding in a tricycle parade; I look through the black and white into their hazel, brown and blue eyes. I don’t know what they saw all those years ago, but looking back at them today, I believe I know what they are coming to see.

“Behold how good it is for brothers, for sisters, to dwell together in unity.” (Psalm 133:1)

How good it is indeed. My “picture, my carving in three panels, side by side”. My sisters. My triptych.