Kites Over Itaquera IV

I never knew what a Godly man was while growing up. My dad peeled out when I was three, leaving my mom all alone in a foreign country. It nearly overwhelmed her but she perservered. She was never the same, though, from what I hear.

Few pictures of me exist. There are a handful of them that must have been shot by my dad. He is not in any of them.

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John Weaver, one of the missionaries overseeing our trip, loves to take photographs. While in Brazil, he shoots constantly. Easily, he takes more pictures of me than all my years. I can’t remember if I ever sat down for a picture in my adult life. School pictures ended in the 8th grade. The only way I remember is somebody said I wore the same clothes for my 7th grade picture.

I never stepped into a studio for a photograph nor do I want to. I don’t even own a camera.

It must be universal for children to smile for photographs. From the few that exist of me, I smile freely. The children in Brazil take it to another extreme. Everybody in Brazil is photogenic and wants to impress the little man in the camera. They like the results in the LCD.

For me, I would rather remember and hold a moment as special. I don’t want to take a picture and then file it in a drawer somewhere only to be jarred by a long-lost photograph. I would rather have the moment take hold in my permanent psyche, if it is that important.

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As I looked at my childhood photographs, I wished I could go back to the days of youth when we played whiffleball or flips with our baseball cards. I still prefer a good game of basketball to cleaning the house and I’ve played many a game of basketball. However, I wandered back in my life, unwinding the paths I have taken and thought about how things might have been, especially with a father.

Like some binary operation in the flow chart of life, I sometimes wonder if just one small turn long ago would have changed my life drastically. But I cringe. I cringe over the paths I should have taken, if I even took a path at all. I still can recall all the dumb mistakes I’ve made, no shortage there and I remember each to exact detail. I cringe over what might have been with a father I never had.

I consider myself fortunate, though, on second glance at those photographs. I made a lot of mistakes since then but it was part of a growing process. In retrospect, I don’t think I have any regrets, just good hindsight.

I came across pictures of my brother almost two years older than me and he had an easy smile, although a little more timid. He turned out a little different than me. After a second marriage faltered and his back gave out, he decided his answer came at the end of a barrel, a shotgun barrel he used to take his own life.

He had more difficulty than I did growing up, I remembered when we were young. My dad chose not to be a part of our lives and my brother was the one who needed his father’s love the most. I could see it in the pictures, now that I look back at them.