Remembering A Photo

Recently, I’ve lost a hard drive full of photos and writing. Lots of photos. Probably dating back to the first digital camera I had in the late 90’s. They were not backed up. The other night, I found a thumb drive and stuck it in the laptop to see what was on it. I found pictures! Not all the ones I lost but I was still happy to find them.

One of the pictures that I thought was lost to me was one my daughter took of me in March of 2005 on a trip to New York City. My son and one of my daughters were on the trip with me and I convinced them that we should go to Liberty Island and to Ellis Island. I had been been to Liberty Island on a previous trip but it was during the restoration of Ellis Island so it was closed to the public so I had missed it. We took the ferry and it was freezing cold and crowded. There was no place to sit, especially for three people. So we split up and I stood and looked out. That evening, back at the hotel, we all exchanged memory cards and loaded all of the photos to our laptops. The thought was that we would be backing them up three fold. I looked through some of their photos because they sometimes were goofy together. Tony is my oldest and is eight years older than Susie but they get along really well, playing off of each other’s goofiness and feeding into it. One of the photos I found was surprising. Susie had taken a picture of me as I looked out from the ferry. It was special because she had taken my picture but also because the photo is evocative of a lot of emotions even to the ordinary viewer, or at least I think it is.

I thought that photo was lost but it was on that thumb drive so now I am sharing it with you and hopefully, should it become lost again, I can find it here.

Photo by Susie Martinez