The Most Important Photo IN MY LIFE

Because that's not lofty at all.

I had to think for a while about this. There are a lot of photographs that mean very much to me for different reasons, but I think that the photograph of my uncle Kevin holding me at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC is one of the most significant images in my life. In the photo, Kevin is wearing a hat and glasses, and holding me up, below my arms, so I can see the camera, or an exhibit. I'm in the navy corduroy dress with white and red flowers that I wore a lot back then, when I was two or three. I think I'm holding the baby doll I dragged around until it was destroyed, earning its name "Broken Baby" from its (lack of) fingers—uneven holes revealing the hollow insides of her arms in their place.

Kevin passed away from brain cancer on my fourth birthday, and somehow I remember the day with vivid detail. The carpet on the stairs was pale blue, the tile in the kitchen a sunny yellow. I offered him a piece of birthday cake, but he was too weak by then, and I didn't understand because I was four. I wore a white dress with pink flowers... or a pink dress with blue and yellow flowers... See, maybe the details aren't really there at all. But I have this photo, this memory of my mother's brother and me—just the two of us, smiling, in one of my favorite places, in a city that feels more like home than it should, knowing that he is my favorite uncle. (What does a four-year-old know of favorites?)

It is one of the few things I have left of him: my mother's stories, his jacket from the Navy, a belt with a silver dollar in the buckle (I'm wearing it now), the original box set of the Star Wars trilogy on VHS, and this image of a day I can't remember and a man I can't forget.




(I wrote about this photograph for a senior project in creative writing, a series of poems inspired by photographs, mostly of family members. The piece on this image is located here.)