Susie!
By: susan peterson stamis
Tags: eyes, father, foreign service, slides, snapshots, state department
Category: Uncategorized
My father was pretty meticulous about labeling his slides and captioning the snapshots he faithfully glued into albums with those little triangle corners that you had to lick in order to make them stick. However, most of the captions were matter-of-fact: a place, “Berlin, 1952;” an event, “Christmas, 1960;” a name, “George.” So, when I pulled this slide out of its slot, I was surprised by the caption in my father’s handwriting, “Susie!” Not just “Susie,” but “Susie EXCLAMATION POINT!”
There may have been an “occasion,” because in the picture, my hair is neatly combed, sleek and shiny. My eyes are bright and smiling and although I don’t remember the actual moment, I believe it was a happy one. I imagine that when the slide came back from the developer, probably weeks after the picture was snapped, my father, in memory of the happy occasion, wrote my name and then, on impulse, boldly punctuated it.
Maybe the moony eyes gazing into the distance inspired him to do so. Throughout my little life, I often received the compliment, “You have such big, beautiful eyes.” “Thank you,” I would politely reply. But as a four-year-old, I decided that simply saying thank you implied that I was taking undeserved credit for my big, beautiful eyes; so I amended my response to the more appropriately humble, “Thank you. God gave them to me.”
Five and a half decades have passed since that captured moment, and my father moved on to the next dimension 35 years ago. Maybe my bright, smiling eyes are gazing into this future, to this day and moment, when my father will reach out from his place in the universe to thwack me on my gray head and exclaim, ‘I love you, “Susie!”’
3 comments on “Susie!”
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About Me
My father was a Consular Officer in the United States Foreign Service. He was first stationed in post World War II Berlin, where I was born in 1950. Subsequently, we lived in the Philippines; Jamaica; Guatemala; Washington, DC; Greece; Ceylon and Mexico; visiting many places in between. I was reared by my parents and nurtured by the various amahs, nannies, and housemaids who, every two years or so, entered and exited my little life.
I was educated in American Schools in “foreign lands,” but the most fascinating classrooms were the exotic locales where we lived, and the most inspiring teachers were the colorful people of those exotic and ancient cultures.
The bi-annual “home leaves” which my family spent at my grandparents’ homes in Los Angeles, California provided a sense of constancy to our nomadic lifestyle. My many aunts, uncles and cousins lived there and I eagerly looked forward to those vacations. We were 1st and 2nd generation Greek Americans (all 4 of my grandparents had immigrated at the turn of the century), and thus had foreignness stamped onto us even though we were Americans.
Two of my father’s siblings were also in the diplomatic service, and we world-traveling cousins were a source of endless curiosity to our domestic counterparts when we came home speaking English with unusual accents, reducing the statesiders to hysterics.With his various cameras, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, 16 millimeter, Super 8 and Polaroid, my father rarely lost an opportunity to document the events unfolding around us. After years of waiting patiently in boxes under the stairs, these photographic records are now fulfilling their purpose as mnemonic retrievals of my little life.
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How touching and beautiful. I love you
Ahh! You are so cute! No wonder your father added an exclamation point! Love you
What a beautiful post Susan.