Thanksgiving
There is a poster of Ingrid Bergman on the back of my closet door.
That may sound strange, and perhaps it is. But there is a story behind this poster.
You see, I am currently living in the house where I grew up, an old house that my mother still owns and lives in, too. I moved back here with my two children soon after my divorce. I had nowhere to go, and I wanted to move somewhere that felt “safe,” both for my children and for me. Plus, I had just applied and gotten accepted to graduate school. In early middle age, I was starting all over, and after a period of excruciating trial and tribulation, I wanted to be somewhere safe.
The boys moved into my sister’s old room. It was large and had two twin beds in it. This was the room they had slept in whenever we visited my mother, so it was not strange to them. Plus, after years of living in military housing, they were used to sharing a bedroom.
I, meanwhile, moved back into my old room. I had lived in this same house growing up, and this had been my room from age zero to age eighteen when I left for West Point. It was small and comfortable and… mine.
It also now looked like my shrine as it was still filled with the trophies, knick-knacks, and books from my childhood, not to mention all of this atrocious West Point memorabilia which my well-intentioned mother had added over the years. All of this STUFF had to go if I was going to live here again as a middle-aged woman downsizing from her previous married life to her suddenly single mother life. There was not a lot of room, but I needed the room to be “mine.” It needed to contain all of my books, or all of my books that would fit rather, as well as prints and pictures and knick-knacks which had meaning to me as the adult me and not as the old kid me. Pretty much everything except for the bed and the furniture and the bookcases had to go. And the poster of Ingrid Bergman in my closet. I had forgotten all about that photo until I saw it again, but as soon as I saw it, I decided it would stay.
Upon closer examination, I saw that it was not a poster per se but rather a yellowed, full-page newspaper photo of Ingrid Bergman which the young me had decided would make a great poster. At the very top of the page, I could make out that the photo was from page C16 of the Monday, September 15, 1980, New York Times.
I do not remember tacking the photo up in my closet, but the date indicates it was fall of my senior year in high school. I do not remember why exactly I put the poster up inside my closet door, where I could only see it when I opened my closet. I just remember that I really liked the photo. It spoke to me, and I wanted to hang it up in my room, somewhere private, just for me. My mother, of course, knew it was there as she used to hang up clothes in my closet, but she never saw fit to take it down over the years even as it turned yellow and brittle and faded. Maybe she saw in it what I did, too, and taking it down would have just been plain wrong.
I love that photo.
In it Ingrid Bergman is posing with her head tilted slightly, her arms crossed across her chest. She has short, curly hair and little to no makeup. She is smiling… sort of. The clincher, though, is that she is wearing this fabulous denim buttoned-down shirt. She just looks so incredibly, naturally beautiful. And real.
As I started to write this, I was not sure why this full-page photo might have been in the New York Times in 1980. The photo was of a young, or early middle-aged, Ingrid Bergman, and a quick Google search told me that Bergman had died from breast cancer at age 67 in 1982. So, it was not a current photo by any means. Further Internet research revealed it to be the cover photo from her autobiographical memoir My Story, which was first published in 1980. Undoubtedly, then, this photo must have been from a full page ad for that very same book.
No matter. (An insatiable reference librarian’s curiosity satisfied with a modicum of effort.)
But WHY had I put the photo up on the back of my door?
And, more importantly, WHY had I decided, over twenty years later, that the photo should stay?
Yes, Ingrid Bergman in this photo is drop dead gorgeous. As I am sure she was in any photo taken of her. She was a gorgeous woman. What struck me about this photo, though, was that she looked so natural, so real, so… genuine. I realize it was a posed photo, that it was used on the cover of her book, and that she may well have posed a long time to get this photo to come out in just this particular way. But, of all the glamorous movie headshots out there, THIS was the one that she – or someone! – chose as the cover photo for her life story. Why? Perhaps because it exuded natural beauty and genuineness as opposed to the glitzy, artificial glamour of Hollywood, and this was what made the real Ingrid Bergman?
Who knows? I don’t surely. But I do know that the photo, whether realistic or not, does exude naturalness and genuineness and truth and spirit. And it was these qualities – regardless of how physically beautiful Ingrid Bergman might be – that truly made her beautiful. And I admired that.
I did not want to be Ingrid Bergman. I did not want to look like Ingrid Bergman. (Lord knows I never looked anything even remotely like Ingrid Bergman!) But I did want to exude that same naturalness and genuineness and truth and spirit in my life.
And I still do.
Somewhere in my life, though, something went wrong. I went astray. I got detoured, side-tracked, waylaid, brainwashed, confused, deluded… take your pick. I allowed myself, for a variety of reasons that I still do not truly understand, to become someone who tried to be all things to everyone else and nothing to herself. That, in three words, is recipe for disaster.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I realized that my deep unhappiness in life was due to a series of poor choices I had made over the years, some of which were cumulative and some of which were well-intentioned, albeit naïve. It is stunning really how many key life choices I made as an extremely young, naïve, inexperienced young woman and the ramifications that those choices had on my life and the lives of those around me.
As a young high school student who had promise and talent and ambition and spirit, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that what really mattered in life was being myself. Being real and genuine and following a path for which I felt undying passion. Yet, I lost that knowledge, that surety, somewhere along the way, and I am not sure why.
Twenty-some years later, having just ended a marriage of eighteen years and demanding that I be allowed to be myself (no matter how selfish the rest of the world said that was), I still saw this original message, this original desire, this original life path in the faded photo of Ingrid Bergman which still hung, determined and defiant in its faded yellowness, on the back of my closet door.
I find it interesting that I hung the photo up inside my closet. While my younger sister had no problem whatsoever plastering a huge poster of a gyrating Mick Jagger right in the center of her bedroom wall, for one and all to see, I, on the other hand, chose the inside of my closet. Where no one else could see it, or even knew it existed.
Yes, I am sure there is something to the fact that I did not hang up a poster of some gorgeous, young male stud. But I saw nothing in the photos of gorgeous, young male studs. Those photos did nothing for me. If I was going to hang up a photo of anyone, it needed to be someone whose photo inspired me to become the kind of person I wanted to be – real, genuine, natural, and true to herself.
It is not so easy to go through life being true to yourself. Well, maybe it is for some people, but I personally have not found it to be so.
Shakespeare via Hamlet can admonish us: “Above all, to thine own self be true.”
Mufasa via James Earl Jones can advise the young Simba: “Remember who you are.”
And Joseph Campbell can create sayings which end up on motivational posters in high school guidance counselors’ offices across the nation: “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
We all know that we are supposed to be who we are. But how many of us actually end up doing it?
I struggle, I strive each and every day to be the person I am, the person I am meant to be, the person I can be. It is not easy. And I often fail. I have a vision, an image of what the real me should be. At the same time, I understand that every grain of sand that slips through that imaginary Days of Our Lives hourglass in my head,
every breath I take, in and out,
every word I say,
every action I take or do not take,
every moment in the here and now is… IT.
This is life. This is my life.
And I am thankful for it. And for all of the special people in it. My two sons. My family. My friends. My chance to be who I am and to try to make a difference in this world, as tiny and eency-weency as that difference might be.
So, Ingrid, as faded and yellowed as you might be, here’s looking at you, kid…….
That may sound strange, and perhaps it is. But there is a story behind this poster.
You see, I am currently living in the house where I grew up, an old house that my mother still owns and lives in, too. I moved back here with my two children soon after my divorce. I had nowhere to go, and I wanted to move somewhere that felt “safe,” both for my children and for me. Plus, I had just applied and gotten accepted to graduate school. In early middle age, I was starting all over, and after a period of excruciating trial and tribulation, I wanted to be somewhere safe.
The boys moved into my sister’s old room. It was large and had two twin beds in it. This was the room they had slept in whenever we visited my mother, so it was not strange to them. Plus, after years of living in military housing, they were used to sharing a bedroom.
I, meanwhile, moved back into my old room. I had lived in this same house growing up, and this had been my room from age zero to age eighteen when I left for West Point. It was small and comfortable and… mine.
It also now looked like my shrine as it was still filled with the trophies, knick-knacks, and books from my childhood, not to mention all of this atrocious West Point memorabilia which my well-intentioned mother had added over the years. All of this STUFF had to go if I was going to live here again as a middle-aged woman downsizing from her previous married life to her suddenly single mother life. There was not a lot of room, but I needed the room to be “mine.” It needed to contain all of my books, or all of my books that would fit rather, as well as prints and pictures and knick-knacks which had meaning to me as the adult me and not as the old kid me. Pretty much everything except for the bed and the furniture and the bookcases had to go. And the poster of Ingrid Bergman in my closet. I had forgotten all about that photo until I saw it again, but as soon as I saw it, I decided it would stay.
Upon closer examination, I saw that it was not a poster per se but rather a yellowed, full-page newspaper photo of Ingrid Bergman which the young me had decided would make a great poster. At the very top of the page, I could make out that the photo was from page C16 of the Monday, September 15, 1980, New York Times.
I do not remember tacking the photo up in my closet, but the date indicates it was fall of my senior year in high school. I do not remember why exactly I put the poster up inside my closet door, where I could only see it when I opened my closet. I just remember that I really liked the photo. It spoke to me, and I wanted to hang it up in my room, somewhere private, just for me. My mother, of course, knew it was there as she used to hang up clothes in my closet, but she never saw fit to take it down over the years even as it turned yellow and brittle and faded. Maybe she saw in it what I did, too, and taking it down would have just been plain wrong.
I love that photo.
In it Ingrid Bergman is posing with her head tilted slightly, her arms crossed across her chest. She has short, curly hair and little to no makeup. She is smiling… sort of. The clincher, though, is that she is wearing this fabulous denim buttoned-down shirt. She just looks so incredibly, naturally beautiful. And real.
As I started to write this, I was not sure why this full-page photo might have been in the New York Times in 1980. The photo was of a young, or early middle-aged, Ingrid Bergman, and a quick Google search told me that Bergman had died from breast cancer at age 67 in 1982. So, it was not a current photo by any means. Further Internet research revealed it to be the cover photo from her autobiographical memoir My Story, which was first published in 1980. Undoubtedly, then, this photo must have been from a full page ad for that very same book.
No matter. (An insatiable reference librarian’s curiosity satisfied with a modicum of effort.)
But WHY had I put the photo up on the back of my door?
And, more importantly, WHY had I decided, over twenty years later, that the photo should stay?
Yes, Ingrid Bergman in this photo is drop dead gorgeous. As I am sure she was in any photo taken of her. She was a gorgeous woman. What struck me about this photo, though, was that she looked so natural, so real, so… genuine. I realize it was a posed photo, that it was used on the cover of her book, and that she may well have posed a long time to get this photo to come out in just this particular way. But, of all the glamorous movie headshots out there, THIS was the one that she – or someone! – chose as the cover photo for her life story. Why? Perhaps because it exuded natural beauty and genuineness as opposed to the glitzy, artificial glamour of Hollywood, and this was what made the real Ingrid Bergman?
Who knows? I don’t surely. But I do know that the photo, whether realistic or not, does exude naturalness and genuineness and truth and spirit. And it was these qualities – regardless of how physically beautiful Ingrid Bergman might be – that truly made her beautiful. And I admired that.
I did not want to be Ingrid Bergman. I did not want to look like Ingrid Bergman. (Lord knows I never looked anything even remotely like Ingrid Bergman!) But I did want to exude that same naturalness and genuineness and truth and spirit in my life.
And I still do.
Somewhere in my life, though, something went wrong. I went astray. I got detoured, side-tracked, waylaid, brainwashed, confused, deluded… take your pick. I allowed myself, for a variety of reasons that I still do not truly understand, to become someone who tried to be all things to everyone else and nothing to herself. That, in three words, is recipe for disaster.
It took me a long time to get to the point where I realized that my deep unhappiness in life was due to a series of poor choices I had made over the years, some of which were cumulative and some of which were well-intentioned, albeit naïve. It is stunning really how many key life choices I made as an extremely young, naïve, inexperienced young woman and the ramifications that those choices had on my life and the lives of those around me.
As a young high school student who had promise and talent and ambition and spirit, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that what really mattered in life was being myself. Being real and genuine and following a path for which I felt undying passion. Yet, I lost that knowledge, that surety, somewhere along the way, and I am not sure why.
Twenty-some years later, having just ended a marriage of eighteen years and demanding that I be allowed to be myself (no matter how selfish the rest of the world said that was), I still saw this original message, this original desire, this original life path in the faded photo of Ingrid Bergman which still hung, determined and defiant in its faded yellowness, on the back of my closet door.
I find it interesting that I hung the photo up inside my closet. While my younger sister had no problem whatsoever plastering a huge poster of a gyrating Mick Jagger right in the center of her bedroom wall, for one and all to see, I, on the other hand, chose the inside of my closet. Where no one else could see it, or even knew it existed.
Yes, I am sure there is something to the fact that I did not hang up a poster of some gorgeous, young male stud. But I saw nothing in the photos of gorgeous, young male studs. Those photos did nothing for me. If I was going to hang up a photo of anyone, it needed to be someone whose photo inspired me to become the kind of person I wanted to be – real, genuine, natural, and true to herself.
It is not so easy to go through life being true to yourself. Well, maybe it is for some people, but I personally have not found it to be so.
Shakespeare via Hamlet can admonish us: “Above all, to thine own self be true.”
Mufasa via James Earl Jones can advise the young Simba: “Remember who you are.”
And Joseph Campbell can create sayings which end up on motivational posters in high school guidance counselors’ offices across the nation: “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
We all know that we are supposed to be who we are. But how many of us actually end up doing it?
I struggle, I strive each and every day to be the person I am, the person I am meant to be, the person I can be. It is not easy. And I often fail. I have a vision, an image of what the real me should be. At the same time, I understand that every grain of sand that slips through that imaginary Days of Our Lives hourglass in my head,
every breath I take, in and out,
every word I say,
every action I take or do not take,
every moment in the here and now is… IT.
This is life. This is my life.
And I am thankful for it. And for all of the special people in it. My two sons. My family. My friends. My chance to be who I am and to try to make a difference in this world, as tiny and eency-weency as that difference might be.
So, Ingrid, as faded and yellowed as you might be, here’s looking at you, kid…….
posted by delta at 3:00 PM
2 Comments:
wow.
yes.
i am such a coward.
but thank you.
what she said
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