"Talking to Myself" by Holly Maurer-Klein

Talking to Myself

My parents were too busy to take pictures after their second child was born. Most of the pictures I’ve found of “the little kids” — me and my two brothers — were taken by my Uncle George, who lived close by, owned a photo lab and believed in the beauty and power of Kodachrome. We grew up with his two sons, our cousins, who lived in a house over the hill, down a path and around a bend, usually a trip taken by me and my brothers in bare feet if the weather was warm.
In the winter, the five of us — my two cousins, my two brothers, and I — used to go sledding on a toboggan on the hill between our two houses. My cousins were always dressed in hand knit sweaters that my Aunt Barbara made. I learned later that Uncle George was tougher on them than my father was on us, but Aunt Barbara baked cookies and they lived in an immaculate house with air conditioning and National Geographic magazines lined up carefully on their coffee table. They always had warm socks and snow pants and new boots and hats and mittens. My brother and I lived in a messy, chaotic house after my mother died when I was 11. We were always dressed in pants that were short enough to show our bare ankles and soggy hats that were scooped off the floor where they’d been dropped the night before.
Pictures of who we used to be can sometimes be useful when it comes to figuring out who we are now, and how we came to be that person. The absence of pictures makes me feel almost like I didn’t exist at all. So in the past few years I’ve been collecting old photos of myself from trunks and drawers. One in particular draws me back again and again.
I’m about thirteen years old, standing on a snowy hill next to George’s son, my cousin Johnny. I’m wearing thick black glasses, and a tight-lipped smile that clearly signals that I’m embarrassed by my new braces. I’m wearing a blue wool sweater that my aunt knit for me two years before, the year my mother died. When she gave it to me, it fit me pretty well. I put it on that morning no doubt thinking that it was perfect for a snowy hill and a snowy day. I wanted to be like the girls in Seventeen magazine who had outfits for every occasion. But I notice now that my gangly wrists are poking out of the gap between my too-small blue sweater and my red mittens. I’m wearing a little round cap of my brother’s that makes me look like I have no hair and my glasses are so thick you can hardly see my eyes.
I stared at the picture when I found it and thought about how neglected-looking I was at that age, imagining that underneath the sweater I’m wearing three shirts for warmth and knowing I’m probably wearing sneakers, not boots, and my ankles are probably red and wet. And compared to my smiling, red-cheeked cousin, who looks warm and hale and happy on that hill, I look cold and worried and self-conscious. Every time I’ve looked at that picture ever since, I’ve noticed how stiff and unsmiling I am in it. And one day as I stared at it, I suddenly realized that what that girl needed was a long hug and a cup of soup, not my judgment. I impulsively gave my face in the picture a kiss. And I started to talk to her.
“It’s not your fault you look ridiculous. It must have been hard to be you in that world of boys,” I said to her. “You’re going to be okay,” I told the girl in the picture. “You look kind of like your mother, don’t you?” It felt good. I felt a surge of affection for myself at 13.
The next day I looked for that picture, which I’d tucked back into the box where I’d found it, and told that girl the same thing again. I did this for a few weeks before I put the picture in a frame and set it on a table next to where I do my reading and writing each morning. I don’t love the layer of glass between us but I think it will mean she’ll get more kisses since I’m not afraid of ruining the photo now.
A few more weeks passed before I searched for the one picture of my mother that I like — my mother, with whom I had such a difficult relationship, who died when I was 11, whom I rarely think of. Pictures of my mother taken later in her life, when I knew her, are even rarer than pictures of me. I found one in an old album. Taken a year or so before she died, she’s smiling into the camera, her lips closed to cover her teeth just like mine in the sledding picture, her hands on her hips exactly the way my own hands sit on my own hips these days. In the picture she’s wearing a worn, V-necked, checked shirt I remember well. I started talking to her, too. “I love you and I wish you were here,” I said one day. It felt kind of right. Then I kissed her face. “I’m so sorry you had such a hard life. I wish I could have told you that when you were alive. I love you.”
I haven’t stopped doing this.

Holly Maurer-Klein

Holly Maurer-Klein is a writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has been featured in Raven’s Perch, Minerva Rising, Front Range Review, an anthology from Feminist Press entitled This is the Way we Say Good-bye, The Sun (“Readers Write”), and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. After a long career in the business world, she writes about work, family, and love in all its many forms. She is currently working on a memoir.

Headshot: Ada Defanti

Photo Credit: Staff