A treasured photographic of Daddy and I. This photo has been cut and the original and it's negative is lost. I keep this is in a small frame so that I might look at it always. Me with my Dad.
I remember this moment with ease. I can see the environment around us that is not pictured here. I recall the thoughts and the sounds and the conversation that happened just prior to the photograph.
Boy! He was so cool! This Dad of mine! We sat together, me in my long sleeve shirt and he in his pink Big Dog swim trunks and black tank top. I wore this because our suitcases had been lost on the flight to the Dominican Republic and more than likely because at this age and in that current frame of mind, the swimsuit my parents had bought for me to tide us over until other clothing came was not something I would wear on its own. What a shame!
I want to shake that 15 year old girl until the marbles in her head stack up straight. How could I think this long, lean frame wasn't worthy of a swimsuit? In fact, why the heck wasn't I flaunting the darn thing?
Dad and I sitting their coolly in our shades when a young European boy came straight up to me and handed me a shell- the very one I am holding in my hand in this photograph. He told me I was beautiful in his strongly accented English and I smiled. Dad smiled too. He agreed and often told me the same.
I still have that shell. Honest, I do! I am a keeper of things, a hoarder, a lover of small trinkets that represent memories. I remember hearing that my Grandma Thurston was a hoarder as well. I like to think this trait was passed on to me from her.
Each and every time my gorgeous teenage daughter sets off in her swimsuit I am reassuringly satisfied. Whether she is walking on the beach, headed to a water slide, whatever-- it brings this mother great joy to see the confidence my child has in herself.
I like to think one generation gets better than the previous, that the insecurities in my head were purposefully Not passed on to my own daughter.
She'll roll her eyes and call me funny if I say this to her directly, but that doesn't matter. She knows she is beautiful and when I tell her that this is true, she'll take it as something her mama says all of the time and than she'll go out and wear her swimsuit with confidence.
Funny that this is where this post has gone. I suppose this is the beauty of journaling. I intended to canonize a photograph that I cherish of me and my Father. It will now be in this journal so I have done that. Unintentionally, I divulged the inner thoughts of a young teenage girl in the early 90's and figuratively patted myself on the back for not passing this thing onto my own.
Not exactly sounds of the ocean coming forth from that shell but better.