Tales from the Shoebox.

I have a Polaroid™ photograph.  A single three-inch square capturing a split-second of life as it was over twenty years ago.  The colors are surprisingly accurate, especially for the format; there is no orange tone to the photo, no blue streak at the bottom where the picture was squeezed & shaken in an attempt to make it develop faster.  The white bottom margin bears no caption, no date, no note, no clues.  I don’t remember that day.  I don’t remember whose yard the Care Bears™ inflatable wading pool sits in.  I don’t remember buying the flamingo-pink swimsuit top with the aquamarine edging and white character bottoms.  In fact, I think I might just be looking at a toddler-me wearing a tank top & Underoos™.  I don’t know whose toes are in the lower left corner of the frame, and I don’t know the photographer, the person at whom my grandfather squints and smiles slightly.  I don’t remember my grandfather – I always called him Bestefar, which is the Norwegian – being as plump as he appears in these nine square inches.  He crouches and squints into the summer sun, perhaps looking up from a conversation with toddler-me.  I seem to be reaching for something with my right hand – that toe, maybe?  Though his pate is smooth, the horseshoe around the back of Bestefar’s head – which would remain until chemotherapy stole it six or seven or eight years after this picture was taken – is ruddy brown like the wedding-day portrait that hangs, to this day, on Bestemor’s (grandma’s) living room wall; in this photo, it hasn’t yet gone the feather-white of my memory.  There is the gold watch on his left wrist.  There are the large hands, rough from years of carpentry.  There is the pendant, of what I can’t see and don’t remember, casting a shadow on his baby blue tank top with navy edging.  If he’s wearing his wedding band or the heavy gold ring with the large ruby – his birthstone – I can’t see it; his left hand is draped over his right wrist in a way that only shows the back of his hand.  The lawn around us is green enough that I think this might be June, or maybe July.  Are we visiting for his birthday?  For Father’s Day?  Is he visiting us in Oregon, or is he still in New York?  The toe in the lower left corner is painted, a left big toe, coral pink through the pool water.  Maybe my mother?  The curved aluminum leg of a lawn chair peeks from the lower right corner.  Who sat there?  The Polaroid™ camera wasn’t ours – we had a simple black Kodak™ 35mm point-and-shoot with the built-in flash – but the photographer’s shadow casts my left side in grey, the angle of an elbow darkening half my small chest.  And all I know about this picture is I don’t know anything.