Like the huge oval studio photograph of Tante Lena with one of Tante Fanny’s twin daughters huddling against her, there was also a huge oval gold-framed studio photograph of Tante Fanny. She was beautiful, and in those days, taking a picture was a special thing, a noble thing, a royal thing. You were posed the way a king or queen would be posed with your chin high, wearing your best clothes, and best clothes in those days were really best. No smiling snapshots, no, not at all. All serious.

My mother had a bunch of these noble photographs in the basement. When I had returned to Springfield and my mother’s house with my daughter Lauren when she was five, I resurrected the family photographs. I carried them up from the basement. I cleaned the frames and the glass. I hung them. Subsequently, I took them with me everywhere I moved, and I took them with me to Iowa. I loved those photos.

Bubbe Devorah, my grandmother — her stern photo hung over my stove wherever I lived. The singular photos of Uncle Izzy and Tante Lena were displayed over a fireplace mantel or in the entry hall or on the walls of a dining-room or in an office worthy of them.

I was still in Springfield when my cousin Francis came to see me. I do not remember where in Springfield I lived at that time. He so sweetly asked me if he could have his mother’s portrait. He asked in several ways, and I answered that I wanted to think about it.

I have to repeat that. I answered I wanted to think about it. It was the portrait of my cousin Francis’ mother whom he had never known, and he wanted her photo, and I wanted to think about it?

If it had been now, I would have immediately run to the wall and taken Francis’ mother’s portrait down and handed it to him happily and kissed him on both dimpled cheeks.

If it had been now, I would have immediately run to the wall and said: “Don’t you want the one of Tante Lena and one of your twin sisters too?”

If it had been now, I would have immediately run to the wall and said, “What about the ones of Uncle Izzy and Tante Lena? Don’t you want them? Take them too.”

If it had been now, I would have immediately run to the wall and said, “You must take the one of our grandmother. Isn’t she stern? You must want this one.”

But what did I do? I told Francis I wanted to think about it.

I suppose he left my house dejected. I do not remember.

I do remember I went and consulted with my mother. I suppose when you don’t want to give up something, you know who to go to for advice. It was decided I should keep it, like giving it to Francis wasn’t keeping it in the family. On what basis, I kept it, I can’t remember nor can I possibly imagine.

Did I call up Francis on the phone and tell him no? Did he call me? Did he come to see me again, and I had the gall to say no to him to his face: “I’m sorry, Francis, I think it’s best if I keep it.” What did I say? How could I? How could I?

Cousin Francis died a few years later. He was the baby born while his mother died, and now he too had died. What was it all for? What was it about? And, yet, my mother and I concluded from his death that it was good I had kept the picture because who knew what would have happened to it after his death.

Of course, you know the rest. So many years later in Iowa, as I prepared to move to Argentina, I had to sell or give away most of my belongings. I thought I could not part with the family portraits, as if I would be abandoning my ancestors — Uncle Izzy, Tante Lena, Tante Fanny, my grandmother Bubbe Devorah…

I spoke to a dear friend of mine about this. She listened to my heart ache, and then she said: “Gloria, what do you want to keep those old photographs around for? They all had miserable lives, and the photographs are filled with their old energy.”

I had the photographs professionally packed so they would not be damaged in transit and sent them to to my nephew Marc in Boston who kept a collection of family photographs hung in his front hall where the huge formal portraits would join the other family photographs and be loved, although none of the other photographs  that shared the hall wall could be so regal and grand as those I rescued from my mother’s basement and wouldn’t give to my Cousin Francis.

In this story of my cousin Francis and the photograph of Tante Fanny, his mother, can you tell how different I am now since Heavenletters? Please tell me you can.

I cannot even recognize myself. More and more, after writing down Heavenletters™, I am not the same.

I don’t think I believe in walk-in’s, but if I did, then I would have to say I am a walk-in because I am not the same person I used to be.

In any case, I jump for joy and thank God that I can unequivocally say that, no, I am not — I am not the same person I once was.