A Framed Photo in an Antique Mall

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One day, I came upon a gold-framed photo from the past at the local antique mall. I wasn’t looking for old photographs that rainy afternoon. I was just there to browse and amble along the aisles and booths.

I wandered past displays filled with tarnished silver, embroidered linens, old books, and dishes that reminded me of my grandmother’s kitchen.

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I heard thunder, and the lights flickered a couple of times in the old building. It was a great place to pass some idle time while it poured outside.

Then I saw the old photographs. They were tucked inside a shallow wooden box beneath a table. Dozens of them. Black-and-white snapshots, faded Polaroids, and tiny photographs with scalloped edges.

Lives reduced to three-by-five inches, five-by-sevens, and a few that were eight-by-ten.

They showed weddings and birthdays, children sitting on porches, women in dresses beside old cars, and families gathered around Christmas trees.

Someone had once loved every one of them.

Photos from Another Time:

I picked up a photograph of a little girl wearing a white dress. She was standing in front of a house with a wide porch, holding what looked like a bouquet of flowers. On the back, written in blue ink, were the words:

June 1957. She wouldn’t put the flowers down.

For a moment, I imagined the day. Perhaps her mother had fussed over that dress. Perhaps the flowers had come from the garden.

Maybe someone had called her name just before the picture was taken, and she had turned toward the camera with that serious little expression children sometimes have when they’re trying very hard to stand still.

I smiled.

In other photos, a birthday cake, a new baby, a summer picnic. And a dog lying in the grass. A woman laughing while someone took her picture.

I put the photograph down and picked up another.

This one showed an older couple sitting together on a porch swing. The man’s hand rested gently over the woman’s. Behind them were flower beds and a garden gate.

On the back, someone had written: Our first summer in this house.

I wondered how many summers followed.

I went back to the wooden box and chose the picture of the little girl with the flowers. I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know what became of her or whether the house behind her still stood.

But somehow, I liked the thought that her little moment in the garden had not completely disappeared.

The Young Woman in the Gold Frame:

And then my eyes landed on the woman in the gold frame. The mat cardboard inside was oval-shaped. She rested in an intricate 8-by-10 gold frame. The young woman had a slight smile, as though she was too shy to smile fully.

I picked it up and allowed myself to think about what her life might have been like. And I decided then and there that she had married a military man who left her to fight a war.

The story was just a figment of my imagination, but it seemed authentic. Plausible even.

The thunder boomed ominously. It was time to go home before the rain came down in torrents.

I tucked the gold frame under my arm and went to the register to pay. I didn’t know her name, what became of her, or whether she was still alive. But she was coming home with me.

I knew that she had been loved enough for someone to take her picture. And decades later, a stranger had stopped long enough to look.

That’s the thing about old and abandoned photographs. They are ordinary moments, but knowing they survived for years made them feel important.

What You Find at Antique Malls:

Maybe that’s why I love antique malls. You never really know what you’ll find. Sometimes you discover a beautiful old object.

Sometimes you find a forgotten story.

And sometimes, among the chipped dishes and dusty picture frames, you find a tiny piece of somebody’s life waiting to be remembered.

I call them my flea market relatives. And I dot them around my home, as though I know every one of them. I choose them randomly, with no real motive in mind. Something about these photos tugs at my heart, and I decide to adopt them.

The Story I Imagined For Her:

I had been drawn to the woman in the gold frame in that antique mall in Texas, and I’ve carried her, and many others, with me ever since.

There was just something about her half-smile, the look in her dark eyes, that beckoned to me. It made me wonder who she was and what her life had been like. All I truly knew about her was contained in that picture frame. 

Perhaps her true love had been overseas in the military. Maybe she was waiting for him to return. She had a photo of herself made and sent it to him, I decided.

She wanted him to rest in his bunk and stare at her image, remembering all that they were to one another. They would marry when he came home to her.

The Story I Imagine for Him:

The military man would often pull this image from his cardboard box of belongings and gaze at her.

He wondered if he’d make it out of this hellish place alive, so he could marry her and raise a family. He sat in his bunk, I imagined, and thought about the children she yearned for. They would have her dark eyes and his fair hair, he figured. 

He would buy them a small house with a yard for the kids to play in. A modest house with a rectangular yard, and a porch swing where they could sit and watch the passersby. They’d wave to their neighbors as they drove by.

They’d build a life that would fill the pages of a photo album.

He would make it home and get a job. He’d drive home each weekday, and often when he turned the corner, he would see her kneeling there in her garden. The spade would be nearby as she tamped down the seeds she’d scattered in the soil. 

He would feel a swelling in his chest of deep, abiding love for the woman planting flowers in their yard. Their supper would simmer on the stove as she waited for his car to pull into the driveway.

Come summer, he would turn the corner and be met by tall, colorful zinnias and pretty morning glories twining up the porch columns. 

He would park in the driveway, and she would walk over to greet him. She would be wearing her apron. She’d kiss him on the cheek, and smile just like she did in the photo she sent him. The one that kept him going till he could come back home to her.

He had told himself that if he didn’t make it out, it would have been this photo of her that got him through the long months and cold nights.

If he didn’t make it back to the US, he hoped they’d be extra careful with this precious photo when they went through his meager possessions. 

They Married:

They married and had three boys. One would later become a military man like his father, one a doctor, and one would become a pilot.

Later, when the boys were in school, they had a little girl with a round face and dark curls. She would run up to her daddy with her arms held high so he’d pick her up and swing her around.

Later, years later, the four children would marry and have grandchildren. And time would slip away like sand through their fingers.

He would die first, I decided. She would be brokenhearted but determined to remain in the little house where love and flowers bloomed. Where their four children were born and raised. 

She would live on another decade, the years and the clock ticking by with a sad reminder of what once was.

Back when their little house was filled with boys roughhousing and a little girl carrying her doll from room to room. Where their mother cooked them hearty meals and waited for her love to return from work each evening. 

And finally, she too would die. The boys and daughter would be scattered across the country with their own families.

Somehow, and no one would remember why, the photo ended up in a box bound for the thrift store. The photo of the young woman in the gold frame sat on a shelf and gathered dust.

What I Imagined:

I imagined the photo going from town to town, thrift shop to thrift shop. Her slight smile pleaded: “Take me home. I don’t belong here with all these photos of people I don’t know.”

Until finally, that rainy day, I happened upon her.

I would cherish this photo of a young woman I never met. I gave her a place in my home and dusted the frame regularly.

Sometimes, I gaze into her eyes and wish that she had been my mother. I could have been that baby girl whom I’d imagined. The one who came along unexpectedly after their boys were in school. 

I have no memories of my own mother or father. It is hard to put together a family framework when there are no memories to hold it up. Like a tent without poles.

I know my father died when I was in elementary school, but I never met him. All I know about him is his name. A relative whispered it to me during my childhood in the sixties. No one was to speak their names in my great-grandmother’s house.

I met my mother twice. My parents never figured into my life in any tangible way.

A few photos of them were given to me over the years. These photos rest in a box, mere images on paper.

They don’t have a prominent place in frames where I look at them daily. Like the woman in the gold frame, whose entire life I’ve given a story.

I still tend to buy discarded photos in antique malls and thrift stores. Because what I call my “flea market relatives” are the kind of family who never leave you.