Portrait of the artist as a very young woman.

I liberated a family photo album from my dad's house this past weekend. More accurately, hauled it off after my friend Linda caught my attention with "hey, what's this?" while we were both sorting through assorted objects outside a room nobody had used for anything, for years.

Big. Square. Brown with a gold curlicue thing on the top. I'd always remembered the "real" family photo album as notebook sized and orange brocade (it was the seventies, okay?) but as soon as my aunt dusted the thing off, yeah, there it was. The other photo album. Time machine, oh my.

Some, like this one, were easy to figure out. Me, in the driveway of our house in Bedford, NY. It was on the same page with others -- a slightly older me standing by a rhododendron bush (I only remember the name of the bush because Dad liked posing me and my mother by the thing about a billion times) then my mom standing by the same bush. The two of us together. Some Mexican relatives I had to have my aunt identify. There's a picture of two young women in early 1900s dress that neither my aunt nor I could identify. I'm thinking possibly my mother's mother and aunt, or another acquaintance of similar vintage.

Looking through these pictures, it's pretty darned obvious I am not my parents' genetic child, though it took until I was 22 for Dad and I to openly talk about me being adopted.

I'm scanning a bunch of these pictures to computer to make family gifts, and it's quite the trip. I've noticed that the "will you take the darned picture already" look on my face is the same from toddlerhood to now; I've never liked having my picture taken. Of course I have to come up with an author photo for Uncial...think I can send them this one?