This is a “feature” I started a couple weeks ago with a Daily Writing Prompt. It’s been fun to find a photo to write about each week. This week, I went looking through the “photo files” and found this gem:

Pictured in the photo from left to right: me, my brother, and my dad.

I am sure that this photo was taken in our old house in Sterling Heights. My brother looks to be about 6-9 months old here. My mom is obviously taking the picture. I have many wonderful memories of crawling into my parents bed on Saturday or Sunday mornings and reading books, or wrestling with dad.

The first thing that jumps out at me in the picture is the gold satin bed spread. I remember it so well. I remember sliding off the bed numerous times because of it. I don’t recall how long my folks used that bed spread, but I recall it being a staple in that old house.

I love the look on my dad’s face here. I almost feel like my mom interrupted some sort of silly game he was playing with us to take this picture. In one game, my dad would pretend to be a bear as we hid under the bed spread in our “tent.” He would roar and grab at the bed spread and we would scream “It’s a bear!!”

Today, if you put a picture of me and my dad next to each other – there is no doubt that I’m his son and he is my dad. As I look at him in the photo, I don’t really see “me” in his face. Ok, the eyebrows – we both have huge eyebrows.

My brother is so little in this picture. I can see a little of each of my boys as babies in this photo. Just like with my dad, the older we have gotten, the more we look alike. You just don’t see that in this photo. We look very different.

I chuckle out loud when I look at myself. I really have no idea what I am doing in the picture. The whole angelic “eyes closed and hand on my cheeks” thing … I wonder what I am thinking in this picture. I look back at all that hair I had and I miss it. I remember my mom giving us a bath and then blow drying my hair while running a brush through it to give me a poofy “Elvis” hair style. There’s the old joke that says, “I used to have very wavy hair … now all that is left is the beach!”

In the same folder as the “featured” photo is one taken the same day. Whether minutes before of after, I do not know. It is a picture that I had forgot about until recently. As much as my brother and I fought with each other growing up, I just love this picture of me laying on my back cracking up, while my dad hold him on top of me. It seems that the brotherly love began right from the get go.