In vintage photos, Agnes Isabella (Maybelle) Guertin, age six,
wears a white ruffled dress; a white bow in her dark pipe curls.
She is angelic, a French Canadian/Irish beauty. The sepia photo
does not reveal it, but her eyes are soft gray.
Age ten, with her family, another white dress, black stockings.
Maybelle is somber. A professional photographer is serious
business.
Age ten, again a white dress, she and her brother straddle a
fence around a pigpen, while their father works beside them.
Age eleven, a school group photo, Maybelle chose a black
dress, long black stockings, and black high-button shoes. She
holds hands with a blonde girl. In the front row, a student holds a
slate on which is written; Guertin School, 1914. Country schools
were named for the person on whose land the school sat; in this
case, my great-grandfather, Zebulon Eugene Francis Guertin.
The two school girls, now teenagers, their hair fashionably
bobbed, smile as they pose with a tree trunk between them,
their hands clasped together around the tree. The picture
speaks one word: Friendship.
"Maybelle was kind of shy, but she had lots of friends," my
uncle tells me when I ask what my mother was like as a child.
June 14, 1921, petite, eighteen-years-old; the newspaper
wedding announcement states that the bride was becomingly
gowned in a white crepe meteor dress and a white hat. The
photo reveals white stockings and white pumps, but no hat.
Maybelle sits beside the handsome groom, Frank Dries, age
twenty-five, on separate chairs. Her hands, resting on a shower
bouquet of bridal roses, display a diamond ring and a plain
gold band. Around her neck, a crucifix on a chain. The wedding
announcement states that the groom, wearing "the usual blue
serge" is "well and favorably known in this community, he
having grown to adulthood in our midst. He is a prosperous
and industrious farmer." Maybelle looks frightened. None of
the foursome in the wedding party is smiling. Marriage is
serious business.
A year later, stylish in a black coat, black cloche, black
stockings, black shoes, Maybelle stands on the Iowa farmhouse
porch, holding her first-born child, Joseph Edgar, named for
his two grandfathers.
The farmer's wife poses behind a team of horses, reins in her
hands. Her dark curls are covered by a man's felt hat, the brim
shading her eyes from the sun. A loose apron over a Mother
Hubbard dress does not conceal her second pregnancy. There
will be many more.
"Maybelle loved babies. She'd walk for miles to see a new
baby," my aunt tells me when I ask what my mother was like
as a girl.
Through the years Maybelle controls the Kodak box camera,
documenting the lives of her children as they multiply. There
are few photos of her; now and then she appears. My younger
sister and I sit with her in a meadow. She stands in the yard
with my father and their oldest son, soon leaving for World
War II. She and I pose together in the snow, squinting into
the sun. She sits on the lawn with my brother, the two of them
shelling peas from the garden. She peeks from behind a pine
tree, hiding from the camera. One Sunday morning, she is
spiffy in a navy blue suit and hat.
The years pass, her girlish figure gone, she is photographed
with twin boys, her last born. The family gathers on Christmas
day for a professional group photo in which we all smile goofily
at the camera.
Soon, my father disappears from the pages of the family
album. Ma is grateful for the group photo; there are only two
showing all of us together.
Before long she is gone; in her sleep. In a picture in her
coffin, she wears a gray dress with red trim, chosen by my
older sisters. They like the touch of red. They tell me, "Poppy
didn't like her to wear bright colors. He thought they were
flirtatious."
Long years later, still missing the mother who never grew
old, I covet the silent images in pictures. I study her eyes, her
smile, her frown; her body language. I strain to hear her voice,
trying to understand who she was-longing to know her.
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