The undiscovered past pays an unexpected visit

Louise, my father's wife, found the photo album in the attic.

She's moving, so she was up there sorting, cleaning, and throwing things away.

My father was a saver, a logger of events. He kept records and journals of everything - where he went, what he bought, what he ate, the high and low temperatures of the day, medical histories for him, his wife, his dog. And how often I called or stopped by.

The existence of another album was not a surprise. But its location was.

Three years ago, after he died, Louise and I read and reread all the journals that were in his office, and paged through all the photo albums he kept on a shelf. We discovered nothing new, nothing we hadn't seen before, because my father was always "organizing," clipping things and making notes, writing names and dates on pictures, then showing us the finished products. We used to chide him about the time he spent chronicling things. "You'll be glad someday," he said. "I won't always be around to remind you who somebody is."

This newfound album isn't much different from all the others. It's labeled and dated, too. But it's bigger and heavier and hard to hold. Maybe that's why my father stored it in the attic, because it wouldn't fit on a shelf.

Most of the pictures I've seen before, the ones of me as a child, as a bride, as a new mother. My cousins when they were small. My aunt, my mother, my son.

But a few are like undiscovered planets, long overhead, inhabiting the space above me, all the while I was in my father's office searching through his things for something, anything, new.

There are three blurred pictures of my parents' wedding day dated Aug. 18, 1946. In two, a big, dark car with a running board is parked in front of St. Patrick's Church (there's a sign), and people are surrounding it - a sailor, women in hats, my father and my mother, Dorothy.

The third photo must have been taken after the wedding - 314 Windsor St., Cambridge, my father printed at the top. There's the car with the running board again, but this street is deserted except for my mother (you can tell by the veil), my father, and three other people. But they are all shadows with no faces.

I find a professional photo taken at the Hotel Astor in New York and signed by Sammy Kaye. This is a honeymoon picture, I know, because it's dated. The photo is so clear I can see my father's wedding band. My mother is wearing a hat with toile and bows, a fancy dress, and long black gloves. They are seated at a table, which has been set. My father has a beer in front of him, my mother something in a tall glass. There are three rolls on a plate. I do the math and think, my parents are 21 and 23.

I sort through a note I wrote to my mother 40 years ago, a clipping about a policemen's ball, and then I find a small sepia photo of a child, maybe 18 or 20 months old, standing outdoors on a warm day, holding an older man's hand. The photo is faded and out of focus and the child's whole body is smaller than a nickel, the man like a giant beside him.

And I know, even before I turn the photo over, and read my grandmother's familiar script, that this is a picture of her father and my father. "Daddy Jerry and Lawrence," she wrote.

I have never seen a picture of my grandmother's father. And I have never seen a picture of my father so young.

"I loved my grandfather," my father wrote in a letter I have saved. "His name was Jeremiah Quinn. He came from County Cork, stood 6'2" tall, weighed 210 pounds, and had a 'good head of brownish-black hair.' " This is all I know about him, all my father wrote.

I study the picture. My father is frowning. His hair needs to be combed. His shirt is too small. He is standing on concrete in front of a white building. A window is open and a curtain flaps in the breeze. The grandfather is wearing suit pants with suspenders, a crisp white shirt and tie.

He looks stern. And he doesn't have a head of brownish black hair. He is bald.

I always thought my grandmother called my father Larry. But once upon a time, at least when he was small, she called him Lawrence. Now I know.

I know so few facts about my father despite all the dated photos and all of his words. Because memory plays tricks sometimes, rearranges things - and even remembers what may not have been: a grandfather with a "good head of brownish-black hair."

Beverly Beckham can be reached at bevbeckham@aol.com.