Family Tree
There’s a wall of old family photographs in the kitchen. They are separated by paternal and maternal relatives. My great-grandparents are at the very top with my brother and me at the bottom, like the family is running a pyramid scheme. It’s organized in a way which makes it easy to follow who had which kid, and how that brings us to the present.
Most of the photos are black and white, but as the years pass and photography undergoes technological advances, the photos transition to color. I can name every relative. My dad has put a lot of care and thought into how these photographs are organized. Some of the photos which used to be in the darkroom at our old apartment have made their way to this wall. It started off as a small project; only took up a small amount of wall space in the kitchen, right outside my old bedroom on De Haro Street. It grew over the course of a couple of years, and then when my dad had to leave his apartment of 21 years, he started over and added to it.
I know a lot about my dad’s side of the family. I have spent hours poring over these photos with him. I love to sit at the kitchen table and stare at the wall, studying each face and finding similarities throughout the generations. All Copi’s have the same chin. There’s a photo of my dad, only an infant, in his mother’s lap. I can see my own face in his.
I say, “Dad, I look just like you!”
He shakes his head and replies, “Poor kid.”
My favorite photo is one of my grandfather, dressed in robes, preparing for the graduation ceremony at the University of Michigan, where he was a professor. He has a large mustache and a skeptical expression. I believe my dad took this photo. Next to it, my dad has placed a still from the movie “Horsefeathers,” in which Groucho Marx plays a professor and wears the same outfit, but with a jubilant expression on his face. The comparison seems to lovingly mock my grandfather.
I rely on my dad’s memory to relate the past. He talks about his elementary school in Ann Arbor, MI, as though he were six years old just yesterday. I can name the streets he used to live on, and his high school colors (purple and white). One photo features my dad with his sister, ten years his junior, baking together in the kitchen, and he tells me a story of the time he took his sister on a joyride in their parent’s car. It wasn’t the first joyride, and probably wasn’t the last.
