.
I Never Knew Rosella Ruth 1902
I have two likenesses of her, and a letter
written to her parents, just after she
was married in 1902. Nearly every
other paragraph mentioned “Charlie.”
.
In the first photograph, her hair was pulled
severely back from her symmetrical face,
her round heavy-lidded blue–gray eyes
stared out under carefully shaped brows,
and a strong chin held her blended round
cheeks in place. Her plainly pinked lips
seemed motionless over a black
bodice lined with a white parson’s collar.
She had retouched the photo herself.
Was it the retouched woman who
willingly surrendered to death, and left
an infant and a devastated Charles behind?
.
Aunt Lillian’s photo of her was less formal,
less perfect than the family recollections.
A vital, direct, and hopeful gaze looked
at me openly as if curious about what kind of
granddaughter I had become. I noticed
her face was not symmetrical at all,
left ear and eye slightly lower than the right,
with a hint of blood, dark in sensuous lips.
Her mouth and chin were still determined,
but did I imagine a hint of mischief ?
And wisps of hair, escaped in wayward
streaks from that disciplined cap of hair.
.
She looked so familiar. That face could
have been mine, once, was the face
I saw in the mirror when I was young;
The face in the photograph shared
my features; the same round heavy eyes,
except brown, like Charlie’s, a drooping
left eye and ear like hers, nose straight
but tilting up. In the mirror
I saw that at my age now, I was like her
grandmother, instead of she being mine.
.
I was often told I was her namesake and
had inherited her “gift,” a rare artistic talent.
In this influence, I have lived my life
with determination to redeem the gift
we each were given at birth. I view her now,
as a mere girl of only twenty- three, scry
her face for inner strengths, and wonder at
her weaknesses, by which to measure
the lessons I have learned, that might
have fulfilled the life she didn’t get to live.
.
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