Max and Elizabeth – the grandparents I
never met. And yet they hang on our
bedroom wall. They gave life to my mother,
then died in West Germany just after the
War. I can’t picture them in color. I don’t
want to. The sepia tone of their last picture
gives me space from a mournful past that
might otherwise draw me in. Events in black
& white are old, less painful. The print in a
book. The color of a poem typed on the page.
There is also the sentimentality factor. No
one wants to see Casablanca in color. There
is also the wow factor – that rite of passage –
the very first time a boy who will one day be
a queen – joins Dorothy in that post-tornado
transit from black-and-white to technicolor Oz.
And then there is the emotional wallop. Like
when Oskar Schindler sees one doomed
little Jewish girl dressed in sharp red in the
midst of Nazi horrors perpetrated in the detached
colors of old photographs. It’s the color red —
it’s his ability to see the color red – that
propels him into taking noble action
even at the risk to his life.
My grandparents, hungry and ill, look out at
me from 1946. No, they are not in color, but
I can recognize them. When they look at me
through the glass and across the decades, do
they also see only black-and-white?
I hope not. I hope they also see red.
