A while back I wrote about my grandfather and the Irish Setter whose life he saved. If you haven’t read that post, give it a read before you open door number 9. It paints a picture.
Christmas is closer than I think. Yesterday I realized that I needed to make room on the coffee table for guests to place their eggnog and toddies when they visit on Christmas day. That means relocating my quilting magazines, knitting books, myriad notebooks, the tome of Eggleston photos that a friend lent me and I’m still poring over, a sea salt scented candle (say that ten times fast), and other bits and bobs that land there because it’s the hub of the living room. It wasn’t an arduous task because all I had to do was put things back where they came from. A radical concept, as my father would’ve noted, usually in reference to something borrowed from his tool chest. But that’s a story for a different door.
Back to the tidying.
I gathered the books and took them to, you guessed it, the bookshelf. There was plenty of room, but I decided to reorganize a bit while I was at it. When I moved a photo album, a small manilla envelope flopped over onto the shelf. I recognized it immediately and greeted it with a hearty “Hello!” It contains photographs of my father’s family. There are portraits of my great uncles in their WWI uniforms, Dad in his Marine Corps uniform, Dad with his cousins at Salisbury Beach, and a bunch of Dad with each of his parents at varying ages.
As I flipped through each picture saying hello to relatives who have long since left us, I was stopped cold by a photograph I had no idea existed. I thought I remembered everything that was in that envelope. I could not have been more wrong. You see, I had stumbled onto a picture of my father with The Irish Setter!
It looks like a sunny, spring day with the trees in bloom. The overexposure leads me to believe that Grandpa took the photo with the sun to his left while Dad and the dog were protected by a large shadow. Nana is transformed into an ethereal being with only half of her residing in this world. My 7-year-old father is the literal image of pride and happiness as he gives his beloved pet scritches under the chin. An idyllic scene in a West Roxbury back yard.
I’m not sure if it’s because I know how the story ends that I think the Irish Setter, although in the midst of familial happiness, appears to have other matters on his mind. Could the darkness obscuring the dog foreshadow ensuing events or is it just that Grandpa didn’t allow for the preponderance of sunshine? I’ll never be sure.
Nana had a very useful habit of writing on the back of photos. She had the dedication of an archivist recording the subjects’ names, location, and the date. I was so stunned by the discovery of this picture that it took me almost a full minute to gather my senses and, with great trepidation, flip the photo over. You’ll recall from the earlier post about this dog that I never knew his name. Surely this was the day all would be revealed. A lifetime’s old mystery would be solved!
I closed my eyes and held my breath as I flipped the photo over. Smiling, I opened my eyes and saw…nothing. Nada. Actually, all that was there was the date printed by the photo shop that developed the picture. The only explanation I can come up with is that, on a much later day, when Nana sat down to annotate a stack of photos from that spring, the dog had already decamped. My grandmother was not the sort to wax sentimental over an animal that had disappointed her husband and broke her son’s heart. Whatever expression you’d like to apply, be it a woman scorned or a dish best served cold, Nana made sure that dog’s name was lost to history.
Christmas is a season filled with mystery, wonder, and love. While I’d love to have the mystery of the Irish Setter’s name solved so I can stop wondering, I think it’s only fitting that the mystery persists and he descends through the ages in anonymity. If for no other reason, it makes for better story telling. And in its own way, the discovery of this photo was the best Christmas present evah.
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