©2018 by Madelyn Folino, 2018 STF Presenter

I had been searching for the lost photo for decades. It would settle a simple argument with my children, skeptics all, that once upon a time, I really had been known as the kid with the freckles. The picture had been snapped by a family friend in June of 1965. I had just turned 14 and was sitting on the warm, concrete front steps of our big, white house. That almost summer day, I was very much aware that Georgia, or Aunt Geo (pronounced Jo), was stalking me with her expensive camera for one of the detailed, candid shots she loved to give as gifts.

Aunt Geo was my brother-in-law’s maiden aunt, a retired New York City school teacher who had chosen a long career despite her wealth. She indulged her passion for photography with camera equipment far fancier than we had ever seen in our little upstate town. From teasing remarks by male relatives, I knew that she was eccentric in other ways besides her unmarried state. She was said to keep $10,000 in her checking account at all times just in case she wanted to spend money without consulting her banker or her broker. My young mind wondered what this exciting female independence would be like? I was secretly pleased at an idea that made the men shake their heads over a woman who did what she wanted and paid her own way.

When the photo resurfaced recently, it wasn’t exactly as I remembered it. I thought I had been looking straight at the camera, that my hair had been pulled back in a ponytail and I didn’t remember wearing a plaid shirt. But, yes, it was me and there was the black, steel porch column behind me and my mother’s Crimson Blaze climbing roses and the blurred, dark green mass of the spreading yew that she always called “the bush that saved your life.” As an adventurous toddler, momentarily left alone, I had hauled myself up over the wide ledge of the old wooden porch (soon demolished) and plummeted headlong into the depths of the embracing yew. Mom had returned to find me missing and following faint cries, rescued me from the center of the enormous bush that she now regarded as a kindred maternal spirit. Only reluctantly, did she ever let Dad prune it to control its size. Mom, a nature-loving artist, believed that the yew had prevented my plunge to the ground and deserved to grow as it pleased.

It was odd to see my image, captured more than fifty years ago. Just out of the frame sat my father, haggard and worn, now venturing outside on a warm day. He had barely survived a paralyzing stroke in late January. While my picture shows a young and innocent girl, always mistaken for younger than she was, the sidelong gaze and pensive expression recall the turmoil bubbling inside me about Dad’s uncertain health and increasingly hair trigger temper. I avidly listened when visitors like Aunt Geo inquired how he was, hoping to learn the truth myself. Seeing the photo was bittersweet and took me by surprise. It reminded me that less than seven years later, Dad truly would be out of the picture.

Of my four children, only my youngest, Claire, seemed intrigued by it. At age 31, she’s a voracious consumer of photographs which she uses as models for portraits in oil paint, notably a series of “badass babes” from history and folklore such as Joan of Arc, Boudica, Cleopatra and La Catrina of Day of the Dead fame. Peeking into her studio in Canada, I spotted my photo clipped to her easel and awaited the result with uneasy anticipation, both for her and for me. My image, framed and composed by Aunt Geo so long ago, would now be reimagined all these years later with my daughter’s artful eyes and hands and the result was…both like me and unlike me, that is, the girl I once was.

Friends congratulated me on Claire’s artistic vision and talent. “It’s just like you!” they said while I saw only the differences between photo and painting. Somehow, she had made me look older and more serious as if the concerns behind my freckled face had now manifested themselves on canvas. Had she seen clearly beyond my gaze, intuiting my thoughts or had she actually listened to me tell a story of that time? The painting reminded me of art from the many YA novels that cross my desk at work. Now that school is out, 14-year old Mady is dreaming of a lazy summer of freedom, but when her beloved father is struck down by a mysterious illness, her whole world changes. Life would never be the same…

But as I thought about my daughter’s work and pondered the time and effort she puts into it, tearing herself away from her young children, compelled to make art, I realized that her process as a painter of oversize portraits is not so different from mine as a teller of family stories. All her life, she has been drawing images of powerful women, just as I have been piecing together stories of strong female ancestors. We share a drive to create these pictures in paints and words and we are both quietly unapologetic about our work. As Elizabeth Ellis reminded us a few years ago at Sharing the Fire, “Storytellers are artists.” We take “the truth” and transform it with our own vision and skills into tales that tell truth in new ways.

Anyone who tells family stories will be faced by loved ones whose recollections don’t match ours and who don’t grasp that strictly accurate non-fiction may not be our first priority. Using facts and visual memories as raw elements, clearly remembered or recently discovered feelings as our guides, and layering our stories over ancient patterns of telling, we craft and recast stories that in the best tests, ring true for both ourselves and our listeners. We grope for authenticity, sometimes painfully, chasing a goal more complex than a simple recitation of bald facts or the unsatisfactory fragments that so often characterize family stories. We want to make them whole, to bring them to life with a full palette of color and meaning and the spark of truth that ignites recognition and understanding of both head and heart in our listeners.

My volunteer family fact checkers tell me things like “Dad never wore a white shirt in his life. He dressed with flair!” or “The neighbor’s name was Astrid, not Ingrid” and I agreeably make little changes to please them. But as to matters of what stories to tell and how to tell them and what they mean, I freely portray what I must, just as clear-eyed Claire paints as she sees and both of us, as artists, may find it easier to first reveal our work to strangers. She has her circle of Facebook followers and I have skilled listeners at my storytelling guild who help me find the way when I am compelled to create one more story from memory, myth and DNA.

Want to hear more of Madelyn’s stories? Join her for her fringe performance on Saturday, March 24  from 10:30 am – noon

 part of Sharing the Fire 2018.  Visit the STF Conference Details page to register for the conference or purchase individual tickets to performances.  

About Madelyn: Madelyn Folino reads, writes, gardens and runs a public library in her native Orange County, NY.  She grew up in a family with a deep foundation of stories about women who prevailed over whatever life threw at them.