Faces

1

The faces peer out, perpetually young, unchanged by the 80 odd years that separate then from now.2

Stoic faces with hard lines, their eyes give no hint of expression. These are the faces of strong men and women, calloused hands and feet, patched and faded clothing, husbands, wives and children who had no idea that life could be other than what they knew. They Farmed in Jackman, worked the woods in Greenville, the railroads of Central Maine, and when their children were born, they were raised to do the same.3

These were not the faces of men and women who went west, or to Boston and New York. They did not send their sons to Bates, Bowdoin or Colby College and their daughters did not marry those who did. They worked the land, growing older than their age, and praised God for what they had, never asking for what he did not provide.4

But the curtain closes on each generation and progress is forgetful of the past. Men themselves, when viewing their past from a cozy kitchen around a warm fire, forget how things were, or embellish it in romantic extremes.5

So history becomes apocryphal, until the day a man finds an old box in an attic, and inside he finds faded black and white photographs of his great grandparents, standing stiff, straight faced and proud. And the man tries to write the real story, not from their affected poses, but from what they could not hide, those lines on their otherwise impassive faces.