Unexpected Self Portrait

I have a new favorite eatery in the coastal town where I have resided since 1999. It’s small and quaint; the parking spaces equal the number of available tables inside. A solitary window extends the entire width of the entry including the glass front door.

Daylight is also welcomed through the opened back doors which enclose the kitchen and prep areas.

Décor is a little bit country, I think, mixed with hand painted meditations, Christmas ornaments, antiques, cookbooks, and one of- a -kind paintings.  Not to linger after your meal is a missed opportunity.

My friend Diana and I meet there for lunch when our lives have become complicated .  It’s the perfect ambience for de stressing while filling up on nature’s bounty.  We always order the same items: a black bean burrito with extra salsa and sour cream for me and tuna salad with dressing on the side for her.

The café is owned by two women who give entirely of themselves to the experience of dining with love. I can just feel it; it’s in the wallpaper and in every aromatic dalliance born in their kitchen. They are always a part of the conversations which fill the cozy spaces within their business.  The locals call it home.

I have invited you into this wonderful place so that you will be able to relax, take a load off and appreciate the circumstances of my “ah ha” moment…

I am finding that I am a very complex woman. I am more than I thought possible. A connection has been discovered wherein I am being given the answers to “Who am I”?  Can you imagine not owning your identity?  Well, until just recently, I have not been able to do so with any clarity. 

Adopted children struggle with this identity crisis.  For me, I have been a character born of fiction and placed into a family to complete their own emptiness and sense of duty.  The first child to a couple desirous of fitting into a middle class lifestyle appropriate to a college professor and wife in the early years of his climb to success.

That’s where my journey began. My parents are long dead and I have decided that my “borrowed” relatives no longer have entitlement to my identity. So now what?

Well, I’ll tell you. I am a visual metaphor hanging on the wall of my favorite eatery.

There I am, in black and white and framed and NFS.  I gazed at myself during lunch recently but did not make an immediate connection until the shared conversation with my friend highlighted my soul’s journey at present.

The photograph was taken at the beginning of a double railed wooden footbridge in the haziness of either dusk or dawn. A forest surrounds the bridge.  You are unaware of the spaces underneath it. The focal point is somewhere on the other side.  It’s black and white with all the shades of stillness and calm captured in neutral tones. The symmetry of the plank boards gives a sense of order to the natural world. The seeming curvature of the hand rails bring the eyes of the viewer up and over and down again. A perfect contrast exists between man’s need for order and nature’s guarantee that all will be rediscovered in time.

I appreciate the photographer’s sense of wonder.  I understand the message. Yes, I am there; naked and exposed. My soul’s journey has been documented and I am validated.  The unknown is beckoning me approach and cross with trust and self- confidence as my guides. I am at the foot of this bridge and it feels like the first time.  I shall cross it and expect nothing and revel in promise.

This is my unexpected self -portrait; my identity, not for sale and gifted to me from the unknown.