A Not So Random Photo: My Parents’ 20th Anniversary

On June 25, 1975, for my parents’ twentieth anniversary, I gave them a photographer’s sitting to have a family portrait made. It was the first time we had had a formal family picture taken, and, except for later weddings, the only formal portrait I can recall.

The sitting cost me twenty dollars. I remember going into the photographer’s studio sometime in June and getting the gift certificate for the sitting. Or maybe all I got was a receipt—things were pretty informal in those days. I bought a card for my parents, enclosed the gift certificate, and gave it to them on June 25. They were surprised, and my mother at least was pleased.

After their anniversary, we scheduled the sitting—I can’t recall if it was in July or August. I’d been taking summer classes at Eastern Washington State College (now Eastern Washington University) in Cheney, Washington, so it was probably in August after the summer term ended, but before I returned to Middlebury College for the fall term there.

I do recall that it was in the middle of a hot summer day. My father came home from work to drive us to the photographer’s office, and he wasn’t very happy about that. My siblings didn’t like getting dressed up for the occasion, but my mother made them.

None of us coordinated the clothes we wore, so when we got to the studio, the photographer had to move us around so the patterns in our clothing wouldn’t clash, while also trying to compose a balanced shot.

Family portrait, summer 1975

Most of us looked pretty glum and out of sorts. That’s because no one wanted to be there. What I had thought was an excellent and creative anniversary gift was not panning out well.

And when the proofs came back, my father groused at the cost of buying prints. (My college student budget had only covered the fee for the sitting.) He complained about having to pay for the gift I’d given them. But my mother insisted that we buy enough prints for all of us, for grandparents, for aunts and uncles, as well as for a number of other people. It might even have been the photograph she stuck in the Christmas card that year.

So my memories of taking this picture are not all happy. But through the years, I’ve been glad I gave them the sitting and that we all followed through and had the picture taken. I look at it now, and I remember the days when the six of us were a family unit. Those days didn’t last much longer.

Less than a year after the photograph was taken, I graduated from college and went on to law school. By November 1977, not much more than two years later, I was married.

Just weeks after this picture was taken, the brother right behind me left for college at California Institute of Technology, and he rarely returned home after that. Within just a few years, he distanced himself from the family, and became less and less approachable until we didn’t even know where to find him.

With the departure of the two oldest children, the family unit became just my parents and the younger two siblings. My father changed jobs in late 1979, and the four of them moved to Bellevue, Washington, in 1980. My parents sold the family home they had built in 1962—the home I’d lived in since age six and a half, and the only home the younger siblings had ever known.

Change. It happens. No matter what we do.

And so a moment in time became precious, even if we weren’t happy making it.

Today would have been my parents’ sixty-third anniversary. It’s been forty-three years since I gave them the sitting for this picture. Sometimes it seems a lifetime ago, and sometimes it seems like yesterday.

What do you remember when you look at a particular photo from your past?