They say that the
word ‘now’ is a bomb that’s thrown through your window, whose wick you can
watch fizz away into nothing. When I think about time, I think about how things
come back into fashion; like leotards and high-waisted shorts, skinny jeans and
Converse.
Time is a dressmaker
whose speciality is alterations.
Time is who I was and
who I am and all the things I know now.
Time is the new and
the old and the difference in between.
The only thing that
stops time is a photo. A moment caught on camera, captured for the world to
see; what we were wearing, what we were doing, who we were friends with…
*
Manhattan, NYC. 2001.
Jason’s grandmother
had sadly passed away recently and she’d left him her house in Dallas. He was
more interested in the vintage camera he’d found in the attic than anything
else in the house. The moment he saw it, he knew he had to have it. There would
have been so much history wrapped up in it, he just wanted to be a part of it.
It was a camera that, he had decided, was probably from the early sixties. It
had a dent in the side, but it was still worth the best part of $500, and that
was today. Jason couldn’t imagine how much it would have cost in the sixties;
let alone how much it must have meant to someone.
It was still early in the morning but the sun was already
bright in the Manhattan sky. People in suits rushed up and down town to get
where they had to be and no one noticed that the sky was unusually clear for
early September.
Smartly dressed in his grey pinstripe suit, Jason left his
apartment on 87th and Lexington just like he did every morning. When
every morning was the same, he could cruise through on autopilot. This morning
was slightly different as he had to pop into Duane Reade on the corner to pick
up some photos he’d had developed. His grandmother’s camera had at least fifty
undeveloped pictures on it.
As he walked to the bus stop, packet of photos in hand, he
thought about his family and mused about his life just as you do when you’re
walking somewhere you know so well. His wife left for work the same as he did
every morning, but she went the opposite way; she worked on the West Side.
His family life was hectic, but that faded from his head as
he got to the bus stop.
Settling on the bus, Jason sat in the same seat he did every
day. Second in from the right; it was the idyllic spot to watch his favourite
city go by and to psyche himself up for the day ahead. He tucked his newspaper
under his arm, and flipped open the lip on the packet of photos; he expected
family photos, old family pictures of kids playing in the sun or maybe a school
graduation.
It was this
fascination with the past that enthralled the man so much into parting with his
money for some photos someone else would have just let rot in an attic.
*
Dallas,
TX. 1963.
Bonnie
and her friends practically ran to the corner of the street, squeezing through
the masses of people and hubbub on the street, all trying to get to the same
place.
One girl put her hands on Bonnie’s shoulders “This is the most exciting thing
to happen all year!” A group of young girls had been given the day off work to
see the President and his wife on their visit to Dallas; they lined the
sidewalk all wanting the best view.
Outside
the Texas Book Depository in Dealey Plaza the streets were a mass of people all
moving at once. A whole range; young women just like the secretaries from the
office down the street; old men who wanted to say they’d seen President Kennedy
in the flesh before they died, little children who looked on in awe and laughed
at the hordes of people hunting down their spot on the grass bank. Everyone
wanted their glimpse of the Kennedy’s; he was a celebrity and she a fashion
icon.
“Do
you remember that little pink dress she wore in Vienna?” The youngest of the
girls asked Bonnie. Ensuing a moment of clamouring fashion talk, all the girls
talking over one another, smoothing down each other’s clothes and plucking at
loose threads.
Bonnie
swapped the camera in her hands back and forward; it was heavy and her hands
were slightly clammy. She didn’t understand why she felt so nervous. Winding
the handle that allowed the camera to capture moving images; Bonnie made sure
she had enough recording time to see the President’s motorcade.
Having
a camera at her age was a complete rarity. Bonnie knew this, she knew she
didn’t earn very much herself and she knew people around her were looking,
wondering how she had the means to a camera such as this one. Truth be told, it
was a gift from her parents for her twenty first birthday this year. They both
saved all year so she could have it and it meant so much to her. And now look,
here she was. Standing on the edge of history; holding history, watching
history. She was going to be a part of history.
“Oh
gosh, I can hear them coming!”
The
streets grew quiet as the sound of a car pulled along an adjoining street. The
cheers made the tension in Dealey Plaza that much more exciting. The people of
Texas collectively held their breath.
“Bonnie,
get ready! He’s coming. He’s really coming.” Bonnie’s friend tittered in her
ear as she smiled. Bonnie took a shaky
breath in and held her camera up to her face as the President’s motorcade got
closer.
‘Maybe he’ll be wearing a grey suit’ Bonnie
thought to herself, her excited eyes craning to see. ‘He always looks good in
grey. And Jackie, maybe pink again? No. White, she’ll be wearing white I bet.’
The
President’s motorcade seated the President in the back along with his wife
Jackie accompanied by Governor Connelly and his wife in the front. As it slowly
entered Dealey Plaza the cheering erupted; the shouting and the sight of
handsome President Kennedy made Bonnie smile unawares. Her chest swelled with a
rise of patriotism in her heart, there was no positive emotion that she wasn’t
feeling; happiness and the excitement of standing at the edge of history.
President
Kennedy was smiling and waving and as he pulled past Bonnie was adamant he
looked right at her and smiled. She struggled to keep her camera up and steady
from all the jostling around her.
Jackie
Kennedy, America’s first lady, as beautiful and poised as ever sat next to her
husband. She waved delicately out to the crowd and giggled happily at their
smiling joyful faces; she held the flowers she’d been given upon arrival in
Dallas on her lap, from where Bonnie was stood they looked like red roses.
Governor Connelly and his wife were equally as present, smiling just as the
Kennedy’s were but something was different.
‘He
is the Governor of Texas, but he’s nowhere near as handsome as Mr. President’
Bonnie thought as her eyes followed the car, along with her camera. ‘They’re
just not as glamorous.’
“Mr. President, we love you!” Sandra from the
office yelled as the car approached. Bonnie laughed; everyone in the office
knew Sandra was a big fan. Sandra’s eyes had glazed over with glee; she wanted
to commit this memory to her brain for life. The day she saw President and
First Lady Kennedy, in her very own town, down the street from her own little
office job.
An
unexpected sound ripped across the forecourt of the plaza, making every single
head turn, every hair on the back of every neck prickle up.
“What was that!?” The girls grabbed onto each
other, their frantic eyes scanned the crowds around them. Bonnie kept her
camera up, confused. She saw people grasping their children close and
collapsing flat on the grass as if to avoid gun shots or an explosion.
“Did the motorcade blow a tyre?”
Another
bang.
And
then one more.
“Oh
my Gosh, Kennedy’s been shot. They shot the President!” Someone in the crowd
cried as people fled from the streets in hysteria, some already in floods of
tears. Bonnie looked up from the
viewfinder on her camera to see the right portion of her beloved President’s
head get blown away into nothing, across Jackie’s white suit.
“No…They’ve
shot the President!”
Bonnie’s
hands fell out of the air, her limbs suddenly jelly. The camera landed harshly
on its side.
*
Leaning his shoulder against the side of the bus made
Jason’s seat rumbled as he watched Manhattan fly by his window; the tourists,
the New-Yorkers, the jay walkers. His unopened pocket of his freshly developed
photos sat on the seat next to him. The bus was fairly empty, even as it
crawled down town.
As he was about to open the photos and leaf through what he
was sure to just be pictures of his grandmother’s youth when he noticed a
little boy playing a few seats in front of him. He smiled, the child could have
been no older than seven or eight and he sat with his mother reading aloud all
the street signs that they passed on their route.
“East seventy second street…”
The vibration on the man’s shoulder was stronger than usual,
he knew because he took this bus on this route so often, sometimes twice a day.
“East sixty fifth street…”
He felt it in his legs, and eventually it crept up and grew
in his chest too.
“East sixtieth street…”
The rumble kept growing, quietly for now but definitely
getting bigger, getting faster.
“East fifty seventh street…” The child went on.
“Mommy...Mommy!” The child tugged on his mother’s coat
sleeve.
“Look Mommy, a plane!” he said, his skinny little arm
pointed up.
Jason, in his the grey pinstripe suit, looked up again from
his blackberry and craned his neck to glance out of the dirty bus window.
The little boy was right, it was a plane.
All the man could think was “My God…’
The man’s eyes were transfixed on the large moving object in
the sky above them.
He strained his eyes to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.
He raised his phone to the window and he took a picture.
‘...that plane is flying awfully low.”
*
Newtown,
CT. 2012.
Show and
tell was Izzie’s favourite part of her teaching week. Friday morning, in her
elementary school, meant that Miss Izzie Smith got to hear all about her
student’s favourite new toy or something they’d done with their families over
the past weekend. It was first grade she was teaching, which meant all of her
students were only six or seven but seeing their faces light up when they
talked about their older brother’s new car or the new family dog made Miss
Smith’s week.
Currently,
Oscar James was snivelling at the back of the classroom because it wasn’t his
turn to take Chocolate, the class hamster, home with him this weekend. Megan
Rowe was doing a wonderful show-and-tell presentation about a camera her Uncle
Jason had given her when she and her family went to visit him in New York City,
or as Megan referred to it “…the place where the all lights are always on and
no one ever tells you to turn them off…”
Her Uncle
Jason had become very well known in the last ten years or so because he’d
bought a vintage camera online, the camera Meg was telling class 4E about now,
and he’d found pictures from 1963 when Kennedy was shot stored in the film. He
eventually commissioned the photos into an exhibition at The Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York and gave the camera to Megan, as long as she promised
to let her Mommy and Daddy take very good care of it.
“…and
Uncle Jason says that if I held it up to my face like this…and look through
this tiny whole here…” Miss Smith listened intently to Megan’s story “…that I
can see history from all of America…”
She was interested, but also delighted in the progress Megan had made
since she’d been in this class. That was the trouble with being an elementary
school teacher, especially with younger children, you get so attached when you
watch them grow up and then when they move up into the next grade, you end up
missing their funny little ways.
Class
started at 7.30am, because the younger ones don’t have homeroom, but about
9.35am Miss Smith heard what she thought sounded like popcorn loudly popping
come over the classroom intercom.
Megan
heard it too and stopped talking momentarily to look up at her teacher.
“It’s
okay Megan, you carry on…” Izzie smiled, nodding enthusiastically to the little
blonde girl.
Smoothing
her grey pencil skirt down, Izzie headed over to the door of her classroom,
looking back at her students for a second who were still all watching Megan.
Izzie opened the door and stepped out slightly, she noticed Miss House from the
classroom opposite doing the same.
“Did you
hear the…” Izzie’s casual comment to Miss House was cut off by a door slamming
at the end of the corridor their class rooms were on.
A man
stood at the door way about 100ft away from the women and looked at them for
what felt like eternity, before slowly, sadistically raising his right arm
until it was parallel to the shiny grey tiles under his feet.
In his
arms he cradled what the women knew to be a gun and yet a second passed before
they registered.
“Run!”
Izzie screamed at Miss House across the corridor and they both slammed
themselves back into their classrooms as Adam Lanza, the man with the rifle,
ran towards them.
Doors
closed but not locked, both women rallied their children who were beginning to
panic.
“What’s
wrong Miss Smith?”
“Why are
you running, we’re not allowed to run?”
*
They say that the
word ‘now’ is a bomb that’s thrown in through your window, whose wick you can
watch fizz away into nothing.
It turns out that time
can stop, if only for a moment.
Clocks stop ticking,
phones stop ringing and dogs stop barking.
These are the moments
we remember for the rest of our lives.
