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Did You Ever Look So Nice | The Samples

Last Monday morning I ordered the twins’ graduation announcements. They arrived Thursday evening, Kit and I addressed them Sunday afternoon, and yesterday Walt and I sat at the kitchen table, affixing self-adhesive U. S. Flag postage stamps to each envelop. 

I’d sent Walt on an errand to buy the stamps, hollering after him as he walked out the front door on his way to the UPS store up the street. “Pick a pretty stamp!” I instructed, but Walt came back fifteen minutes later with a book or two of Forever stamps and an apology from the franchise owner. 

“Rami says so sorry, but he doesn’t have any pretty stamps today.”  

We’ve known the photographer, Katherine, who took the pictures for Kit and Walt’s graduation announcement since they were in preschool with her son. She took the twins’ school photos then and has photographed our family for Christmas cards a couple times since. I’d planned to have her take Archie, Kit, and Walter’s First Communion photos, too, but I couldn’t get my act together to pull off that shoot. I’d scheduled the session with Katherine a week or so after the celebratory mass because that’s when the azalea bushes in her old house’s backyard would’ve be in bloom, but backed out before it was time for the shoot. I didn’t have it in me to wash the cake icing from the boys’ suits and iron the wrinkles out of Kit’s gown, so I let the moment pass. 

Maybe that’s why I spent so much time with Kit scrolling through page after page of card designs, comparing each of them to the photos she and I liked best from her and Walter’s photo shoot. When she finally picked a design and I gave the A-OK, Kit chose two photos to complete the announcement, one for the front and one for the back. I’ve been doing this for a while now with Kit and Walter, intentionally doing nothing in situations where I used to do almost everything. It’s time to trade my ascendancy for their autonomy, I’ve decided.  

Most nights before bed I fill the diffuser on John’s nightstand with fresh water and essential oils. To do so, I first have to take off the diffuser’s base cover and each time I do a few drops of condensation roll of its rim. That’s why I always put down the base cover on whatever books or papers are stacked on the nightstand to protect the wood from the water.    

A few months ago, I saw the top of the nightstand was empty after I’d popped off the diffuser’s base cover, so I opened the nightstand’s top drawer and riffled around inside for something to catch the water dripping from it. Underneath a pile of tangled charging cords and a handful of euro coins, I found a copy of our family’s 2012 Christmas card. I’m not sure how it ended up there, but John saves everything and stuffs it everywhere so I wasn’t particularly surprised to find it where I did. 

That year I’d ordered our cards from Katherine. She’d met us at Paris Mountain on a Saturday afternoon in fall to take our family’s photos. The day before we met Katherine at the park, I’d went to Sears in Haywood Mall to shop their Land’s End collection. There I found coordinating outfits for Archie, Kit, and Walt, as well as a matching scarf for myself. John’s never liked it when I bought clothing for him, so I made sure to choose sweaters and shirts and pants in basic colors for the kids and me that would match whatever John already had, hanging inside our closet. 

On one side of the Christmas card I found at the bottom of the nightstand’s drawer, there are twelve photos of Archie, Kit, and Walter’s faces, each one featuring a slightly different smile or tilt of the head, all of them cropped into circles. There are four photos of Archie across the top of the card, four of Walt in the middle, and four of Kit along the bottom. In their expressions you can see the little people they were then, as well as the ones they’d become today. 

I’d chosen a family photo for the flip side. That was the year my kids were passing through that awkward smile phase, so the most natural shot Katherine was able to capture was one in which we’re all making funny faces. But the photo worked so I picked it and even now, all these years later, it still made me smile when I found it in the bottom of the nightstand’s drawer, underneath that pile of tangled charging cords and a handful of euro coins. 

That night a few months ago, after I’d used it to protect the nightstand’s wood, I propped up the card against John’s bedside lamp and it’s been there ever since. I pass by it a handful of times a day and, each time I do, I’m struck by time’s disregard for temperance. There we were then, and here we are now. Archie could fit on John’s lap, Kit could stand on his shoulders, and Walt could kneel on my thigh. College decisions and graduation announcements were one-hundred years away. 

Until they weren’t and I e-mailed Katherine to book another session, this time downtown, to close the circle. The day of this session, Kit, Walt, Archie, and I met Katherine in Falls Park. I followed behind them, the photographer, and my kids, pulling beside me a suitcase filled with changes of clothing and shoes as we five walked from spot to spot, stopping here and there as Katherine snap-snap-snapped her camera’s shutter. When she asked, Archie held Katherine’s big circle reflector with the black fabric border and foiled side just the way she told him to best diffuse the sunlight across his siblings’ faces. Kit and Walt took Katherine’s direction, turning their hips here and popping their chins there and throughout all of it, the promenading and preening and posing, I stood off to the side and took in everything. I filed away inside of me Katherine’s instructions, the twins’ nervous laughter, and Archie’s requests for clarification when he wasn’t quite sure what was expected of him. 

Remember this, I ordered myself. All of it. Snapshot these moments in your mind as Katherine is capturing them on film. Build a frame around all of it and construct its edges like the brick walls of the Wyche Pavilion, the ones in the background of the shots Katherine’s taking right now. Stuff it all away like the Christmas card inside the nightstand’s drawer and know this – to catch the rolling water or mark the time, these memories will be right here waiting to surprise you when you need them the most.