On Saturday 21 September, I drove with my daughters Alexandra and Hilary to Fort Langley. We found a good restaurant to eat and somehow we manoeuvred around the crowds. I found a little frame so I bought it for $13. Because I can now print to size, I can buy frames in any size.

21 September 2024

At home I kept looking at the little girl in the frame. It was when I opened the frame that I saw that she had a name. I wondered when the little photograph was put in. I asked myself, "Is Corrie still alive?" "How did the frame get to a Fort Langley antique market?"

The little picture reminded me of an event in my life that I will never forget. In 1950, when I was 8, my mother took me to the Buenos Aires Philippine Legation on Calle Florida. It was in the same building as the American Embassy. My mother left me at the adjacent Lincoln Library (an arm of the US Information Agency) which I am sure was run by spies. I picked a book which was called American Heritage. In it saw photographs taken by Timothy O’Sullivan during the American Civil War. There were soldiers that were dead and others that were alive. Such was the clarity of the pictures (the first I had ever seen in b+w?) that  they gave me a little shock. They looked like the people walking outside on Florida. I thought, “The people outside are alive. The soldiers both the dead and the lives on were once all alive.”

That book made me be aware, for the first time, that there was something called death.

I felt a similar reaction  in me to the Buenos Aires American Heritage book that hit me hard when I found out that the little girl in the frame had a name.

It filled me with a sadness and I wondered if some day, when I am long gone, someone will find the frame with the picture of my granddaughter Lauren with Pancho. 

Should I open the frame and write Lauren’s name?