First of all, thanks, Calliope, for suggesting this topic. I love looking at people’s baby pictures; I love looking at MY baby pictures. I like the idea of revisiting some semblance of innocence, and of trying to imagine how it felt to be two, or four, or one.

That being said, it was hard to choose pictures for this week’s Friday Photo, and not because I was so damn cute. The hard part was deciding which funny looking outfits, injuries, goofy looks, and hippie parental figures I wanted to share with you. It was the 70s, after all, and didn’t we all wear some interesting ensembles? Note the Betsy Ross hat I’m wearing in the photo below, as well as my bruised, scabby knees. At least my face is intact in this picture; I could have posted the end result of this incident (see item 11), but it’s not nearly as cute. And my parents? Yeah, my mom had long hair and wore flowery dresses and tube tops and platform shoes. And my dad? He looked like a cross between Kenny Loggins and the Unibomber. My college roomate, uopn seeing photos of my parents from the late 70s, asked if my middle initial (M) actually stood for Moonbeam. I’ll never tell.

As for the second picture…truthfully, I did pick this one because it’s so damn cute. I mean, sweetness and innocence are just oozing from every pixel of this photo. We were at a petting zoo, and I was a little afraid of that deer, that sad, pitiful, emaciated deer. It just walked up and stuck its head in the crook of my arm. I cropped its skeletal body out of the picture, but if you could see it you might understand my fear. I think it was planning to eat me.

I think I remember the day this picture was taken, when someone (my mom? my grandmother? my aunt Karen?) saw a photo op and took this picture. Or perhaps I’ve just seen other pictures that were taken that same day and constructed a memory based on those images.

It was warm outside. My great-grandmother was with us. She was old to me even then, her coal black and silver hair shining in the summer sun. The whole family was there, in fact, and everyone was happy. My grandfather was talking to my soon-to-be uncle Mike. My aunt Karen was taking lots of pictures, and my mom was drinking soda through a straw. My grandmother was wearing yellow and holding my hand as we looked at the goats and bunnies and lambs. “Look,” she said, “these are just like the ones you and Aunt Stella put flowers on in the cemetery,” and I reached out to touch one but it was warm and wiggly, not hard and cool like the graveyard lambs, and I giggled and clung to her shirt, buried my face in her shoulder, inhaled her Emeraude perfume. I was the only child then, the only grandchild, the only neice, and they all loved me fiercely, and I felt it that day. I stood in the middle of the little barnyard and watched them all taking their pictures, sipping their drinks, talking their adult talk, but they were aware of me and formed a tangible circle around my small form. When the deer nuzzled my elbow I gasped and suddenly I was the center, the true center, and every eye turned in my direction. My own eyes widened in fear and amazement, and my grandfather, my protector, knelt down a few feet away and said gently, “It’s okay, Darlin’, he just wants to be near you just like I do, ’cause you’re so sweet,” and I relaxed and smiled and someone snapped a picture.My grandfather is gone now. My great-grandmother died a few years ago. My aunt Stella is buried in the cemetery where we used to walk, where the white stone lambs mark the graves of children. There was so much I didn’t know then–that children could die, or that any of these people could leave me forever, or that the circle would widen and more children would come and join me in the center, or that someday I would be a grown up, too. What I knew then–what I know now when I look at this picture–was the belief that no harm could ever come to me in that impenetrable circle of love, that when I called out a voice would answer to soothe me, that when I reached out my hand someone would be there to hold it.