I have always been interested in the subject of, and the subjects in, family portraits. I find it fascinating how the positioning of the family as a whole, the intentional placement of the individuals, and the body language of each member, gives you a sense of their place—their role—in the family dynamic. I can spend hours in museums observing the influence of assumed-hierarchy as dictated by tradition, the self-imposed hierarchy as dictated by tribal assignment, and the attempt by some to claim their place distinct from the family—by positioning themselves as far away from the group as possible, even if by mere inches—while still remaining in the frame.
Over the years I have appreciated the opportunity to study family portraits of friends and acquaintances, finding it a source of insight—and entertainment. Not that other people’s family portraits are more interesting than my own family portraits, but rather, because my family was never assembled for family portrait sitting. There is a photo taken of us kids when we were young, and gathered for holiday greeting card insert-photo. But there is not one photo of my entire immediate family, my father, mother, and us five children, together in one place, at one time, assembled for the intent of creating a portrait documenting our family unit —Not one. There were a number of years, after my father died, where this fact saddened me. For a child’s sentimental reasoning, I grieved the absence of a cherished family portrait. Not because we didn’t have one, but rather how not having one, among other reasons, set us apart from other “normal” families.
Years later, while doing yet some more healing work around my experience of, and relationship with, my family dynamic, I decided I needed to create my own mental family portrait. So I meditated and visualized what I imagined that would look like. I started with the traditional portrait set-up; my mother and father next to each other at the center, seated on large throne-like chairs; their children placed around them in a horse-shoe arc, the tallest behind them and shortest to the sides, in loving respect. Okay…that didn’t work, at all, starting with the thrones, and my parents sitting next to each other. There was only one throne in our family, my mother inhabited it, and she was a lifer.
I played with several other, more traditional, portrait set ups, none of which seemed to capture the essence of our familial structure. I realized that in order for me to assemble an image that accurately represented our family dynamic, as I experienced and believed it to be, and at the same time captured the love I knew was simmering under the surface, I had to think outside the frame. So, I set my imagination loose to create for me what my world inside the frame would look like.
With my eyes closed, I imagined a variety of potential family portraits projecting like a slide show across the movie screen in my mind. I witnessed shapes and colors weaving together, assembling and disassembling a series of abstract collages; each one with a promise of possibility, only to melt away like sidewalk chalk-art during a thunderstorm. Ever the cock-eyed optimist, I remained hopeful the appropriate image would be revealed to me. My intention, willingness, and patience paid off. When my creative visualization session was complete, I had locked into the “perfect” Family Portrait.
This image presented itself in the form of an Andy Warhol-esque painting, with a layout of six distinct frames, each frame containing the same image featuring distinct variations of complimentary colors.Each of the six frames housed a fish bowl showcasing the full length profile of a stunning Betta Fish. As I had actually had betta fish for pets as a child and was familiar with some facts of these beautiful and aggressive creatures, I found this image to be curious, and insightful. As this vision came to me pre Google-Search, I further expanded my knowledge old-school style, by spending several hours at the library researching betta fish. What I found read like my family as the subject of a Life Time Biography episode.
“Bettas, unlike other species, are not schooling fish and will fight with each other, regardless of gender. Bettas prefer to swim alone and also need a comfortable place to hide. Aquatic caves or dense, planted corners work great in making a betta feel safe.
The betta got its name from an ancient clan of warriors, called the “Bettah.” The fish were given a combatant name after the fighting fish became popular in the mid-1800s. In fact, the sport became so renowned in Thailand that the former King of Siam had it regulated and taxed! Spectators of the sport based their bets on the bravery of the fish, rather than the damage inflicted by the victor.”
So there was my family portrait; six separate fish bowls each containing a majestic and lethal occupant. And like the betta fish, we are all majestic in our own right. Similarly, we are a lethal combination and it is advisable to refrain from assembling our spectrum of perspectives and personalities. Also like the betta fish, we can put our glass bowls up next to each other for a pleasant visit, but bowl-jumping for any extended period of time is not wise.
Unlike the betta fish, we did assemble in the same “bowl” for holidays, birthdays and wedding celebrations, some of my favorite experiences as a family. We celebrated Christmas in our family (base) home, and I loved the magic of the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. I was a fool for the holidays, in part because it was the time of year when my heartfelt internal world and the external “real” world around me mirrored more accurately the Pollyanna experience I was choosing to live in my head. However, the days following Christmas grew progressively melancholic, as I watched the Christmas spirit slip away with the onset of New Year’s Eve. And each year, like clockwork, with the twelfth strike of the chime, the clinking of glasses, and the blowing of horns, I kissed the magic goodbye. And like Cinderella rushing home from the palace, each step bringing her closer and closer to the safe little corner of her world that had her marked different and alone, I slipped back into my fish bowl.
In the end I found it interesting that my fish family portrait was minus a resident, consisting of six bowls and not seven. I just assumed the absence of a seventh betta and bowl was symbolic of the absence of my father from the family album, having died years earlier when I was 21. Or, maybe the missing bowl and fish was symbolic of my absence, being the painter of the portrait, an observer. Anyway, blah, blah blah, black sheep; Bottom Line, we never took a family portrait. I have come to terms with this fact. As for my place in the family dynamic, is to be in it, yet not, of it. Not only have I come to terms with this, I have come to identify and embrace what was possible for me when I chose to love my family members enough to release them from my expectations of who I thought I needed to be in order for me to be happy. When I chose love without expectations, I found that, from my bowl, I could appreciate the authentic beautiful of each family member, without engaging in personalities that I experienced as running counter to my well-being. In this, I get to experience the best of everyone, first and foremost, myself.
As for that Black Sheep plush towel, a month after my birthday—during the early days my first extended time away from home doing summer stock theatre—it disappeared. I had found my fish bowl.
