THE ISOLATION JOURNALS - DAY 25 - BEAUTIFUL DAY

Today’s prompt:

Choose a photograph—maybe you took it, maybe you’re in it, maybe you cut it out of magazine just because it delighted your eye: the point is, the image doesn’t have to be beautiful or good, but you saved it for a reason, right? It means something to you. 

Your job is not to describe the picture. You can—but the point is to let it take you somewhere. How does the photograph make you feel? What does it make you remember? What’s your relationship to the people or place in the picture? And, whether or not you know them, does a story come to mind? If you don’t remember when the photo was taken, that’s fine: let yourself conjecture. What do you imagine happened the moment before or after the click? What might you know about the past or future that the photographer or subject does not? Who isn’t in the picture? What’s just outside the frame, in space or time? If you could, what would you ask the photographer (or subject) now, a day, a month, a decade since the moment held in the frame? Tell us what you believe or fantasize, beginning or ending with the moment that the photo was captured.

And—here’s a bonus: Now that you’ve written about a photo you possess, one you can look at any old time, write about the one you wish had been taken; if only that moment had been captured—but it wasn’t. In this case, with this photo that doesn’t exist—describe it in living color. (Unless, of course, it’s black and white.)

Beautiful Day

When I used to commute to work, before the current unpleasantness, I spent a lot of time listening to podcasts. Mostly NPR. This American Life. Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

I remember one Fresh Air interview that touched me quite deeply. It was an interview with Marielle Heller, director of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The director talks about the profound experience of watching a particular episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with her 3-year old son, Wylie. “It’s the fish one,” the director says, “the one about death.”

In the episode, Mr. Rogers goes to feed his fish, and one of them appears to be dead. He tries to revive it, but it’s no use. The fish is dead. After Mr. Rogers buries the fish, he goes on to talk about his dog Mitzi, who died when he was a kid.

In the interview, the director describes watching her young son absorb this information. Wylie turns to his mother and says, disbelieving, “dogs don’t die.” And his mother, the director Marielle Heller, has to tell him: “dogs do die.” Wylie asks about cats and then walruses and then, of course, people.

As I sat there on the bus listening to the interview, I felt embarrassed when the tears started trickling down my cheeks. I wiped them quickly away, hoping none of my fellow riders saw. I’d never really thought about the fact that there is a time in each child’s life when they first learn about death.

And then I remembered the photo.

There’s a photo of me when I was a little girl that I keep among my special things. I’m wearing a too-small white dress, white ankle socks, and white shoes. My hair is pulled into two short pigtails. Behind me is a Korean doll wearing a billowing yellow gown. I remember I used to think the doll was very special, something I could look at but not touch.

My friend Mary Zimmerman lived across the street. She was a few years older than me, but she didn’t care. She was still my friend. Mary invited me to go to something called “the fair” with her, but I had a stomach-ache. I was sad to miss the fair, whatever that was. Later that day, Mary stopped by my house with a pretty orange goldfish in a clear plastic bag. She’d won it at the fair for me. It was my first-ever pet.

My parents purchased a round glass fishbowl and plastic container of fish food for my new pet. Every day, I was careful to sprinkle a few flakes of food into the bowl. I watched the pretty orange goldfish swim to the water’s surface and gobble the food up.

One day, when I went to feed my fish, I saw it flopping around on the billowing yellow fabric of the special Korean doll. I shouted out to my mother for help. We somehow managed to scoop the fish back into the bowl. But like Mr. Rogers, our attempts to revive proved useless. The fish was dead. We flushed it down the toilet.

In retrospect, I recognize that was the moment when I first learned about death. Some might say that was also the pivotal “loss of innocence” moment that I bit into the proverbial apple of knowledge.

But in reality, that moment meant nothing. I was still that little girl in the too-small white dress, white ankle socks, and white shoes. And I would remain that little girl, more or less, for many more years. After all, it was just a fish.

I don’t think death becomes real until it takes away someone you care about. And then once it does, the world becomes a terrifying place.

In her Fresh Air interview, Marielle Heller talks about the moment her son realizes what death really means:

“it felt like he was weeping for all humanity or, like, the entire universe and just asking me if we could bury all the walruses in our backyard so we could visit them.”

Today, thinking about all the losses I’ve experienced personally, and all the losses we’re experiencing collectively, I mourn for humanity, the entire universe, and all the walruses.

But if I’m being honest, what I mourn most of all is that little girl in the too-small white dress.