This is a picture of my grandmother wearing a bathing suit.  Look at the way her legs look.  Even though it’s black and white, you can tell her legs are tanned.  I bet she was a great dancer before she became old and started to smell like lavender soap.

The man she’s with isn’t my grandfather.  I asked around, but no one seems to know who he is or what beach they’re at or who took the picture or how the man came to be missing his hand.  My dad says maybe it was the war, but the man would have been too young for the first war, and the second wouldn’t have started yet.

If you look here, you can see the man’s reflection in my grandmother’s sunglasses.  She’s not even looking at the camera.  She’s looking at the man, making a face.  You can tell she knows the picture’s being taken though, but she decided to look away.  She has this way of holding her mouth that gives her away, a self-conscious twist in her bottom lip that she didn’t have when she got older, when I knew her.

I keep this picture in its frame by my bed.  When I was younger and I’d have nightmares, I’d turn the light on and look at it.  I don’t have nightmares anymore, but I still like the picture.  This is a picture of my grandmother wearing a bathing suit.