Mr. Rabbit

I have been looking at all these old pictures for almost three weeks now. Actually, I have mainly been looking at the young girl I was. She holds such mystery to me. I even asked my father to send me all the pictures he had of me before the age of twenty. Childhood pictures are quite a rare commodity in my household. Although I am sure we must have taken as many as any other families, a bitter divorce and later on the flooding of our basement, where the photo albums were kept, impoverished the collection even further. The pictures, I was told, glued together face to face, forever hiding their content. Only those that were secured away prior to any of these events remained accessible.

My father sent me two dozen pictures, half of which I had never seen before or at least, not in a very long time. The memory of these days was still very vivid, except perhaps for the fact that I had not thought of them since they happened. However, the impact of those days on my life lives on, sometimes rather clearly, other times more subtly. These were the formative years. They contributed in shaping me into the person I became.

My father’s pictures, added to the ones I already had, provided a good sampling of my early years. Once they were all scanned and arranged by date, a few patterns started emerging. The first one: there are no family pictures. There are pictures of individuals or pairs, only twice is the entire family gathered in the same frame, each times I am under the age of four, and both times my mother is distancing herself from us. Several pictures were taken during the same family gathering. I was obviously young and obliging enough to be passed around from hands to hands, since I am being held by a different person in every frame. Everybody is holding me at some point, except for my mother. Even though she often appears in the pictures, she systematically looks away from me. She would be standing between her two children, turned away towards my brother.

Another noticeable aspect is the fact that nobody ever smiles. Until I am about four years old, I am obviously out of place as I smile from ear to ear without restrain. Afterward, I just look sad; there is no hint that attempts were ever made, except once or twice and it looks rather more like a forced grimace. My face starts lighting up again late in my teens and the pictures then, are never in family settings. There is an exception I must reveal. I must be about seven years old, I am holding carefully a small white rabbit in my arms and there is a glimpse of unrestrained joy in my eyes even though my smile is reserved. Later on that day, Mr. Rabbit will become my first little companion.

I also noticed that whenever a few of us were forced to pose for the camera, we hardly ever touch each other and, in the rare occasions we did, the discomfort was palpable.

The saddest realization of all came from a group picture of nine little girls goofing around like eight years old do. I am sitting in the middle of the crowd and I look as if I am fourteen years old while indeed, I am the youngest of all these jesters.

I am sure anyone could argue that if I look and scrutinize long enough, I could detect almost anything I want from almost any expression I see in these pictures. It might be true. But others have reached the same conclusions without enticement. I also understand that we live in different times and back then, abuse was not something we talked about, least of all, interfere with.

Still, I cannot help but see a brave and strong little girl who faced something terrible and somehow manage to extirpate herself from that situation, all by herself. No wonder they stayed at bay, they failed her in every possible ways. Fortunately, childhood can only last so long and one day we wake up and it’s all over. And sometimes it takes a little while longer.