“The Stranger in the Photo is Me” by Donald M. Murray
I was never one to make a big deal over snapshots; I never spent long evenings with the family photograph album. Let’s
get on with the living. To heck with yesterday, what are we going to do tomorrow? But with the accumulation of
yesterdays and the possibility of shrinking tomorrows, I find myself returning, as I suspect many over 60s do, for a
second glance and a third at family photos that snatch a moment from time.
In looking at mine, I become aware that it is so recent in the stretch of man’s history that we have been able to stop
time in this way and hold still for reflection. Vermeer is one of my favorite painters because of that sense of suspended
time, with both clock and calendar held so wonderfully, so terribly still.
The people in the snapshots are all strangers. My parents young, caught before I arrived or as they were when I saw
them as towering grown-ups. They seemed so old then and so young now. And I am, to me, the strangest of all.
There is a photograph of me on a tricycle before the duplex on Grand View Avenue in Wollaston I hardly remember; in
another I am dressed in a seersucker sailor suit when I was 5 and lived in a Cincinnati hotel. I cannot remember the
suit but even now, studying the snapshot, I am drunk on the memory of its peculiar odor and time is erased.
In the snapshots I pass from chubby to skinny and, unfortunately, ended up a chub. Looking at the grown-ups in the
snapshots I should have known.
In other snapshots, I am cowboy, pilot, Indian chief; I loved to dress up to become what I was not, and suspect I still am
a wearer of masks and costumes.
It would be socially appropriate to report on this day that I contemplate all those who are gone, but the truth is that my
eyes are drawn back to pictures of my stranger self.
And the picture that haunts me the most is one not in costume but in the uniform I proudly earned in World War II. I
believe it was taken in England from the design of the barracks behind me. I have taken off the ugly steel framed GI
glasses, a touch of dishonesty for the girl who waited at home.
My overseas cap with its airborne insignia is tugged down over my right eye, my right shoulder in the jump jacket is
lower because I have my left hand in my pocket in rakish disregard for the regulation that a soldier in that war could
never, ever stick a hand in a pocket.
The pockets that are empty in the photograph will soon bulge with hand grenades, extra ammunition, food, and many
of the gross of condoms we were issued before a combat jump. This GI item was more a matter of industrial
merchandising than soldierly dreaming — or frontline reality.
The soldier smiles as if he knew his innocence and is both eager for its loss and nostalgic for those few years of naiveté
behind him.
I try once more to enter the photograph and become what I was that day when autumn sunlight dappled the barracks
wall and I was so eager to experience the combat my father wanted so much for me. He had never made it to the
trenches over there in his war.
When that photograph was taken, my father still had dreams of merchandising glory, of a store with an awning that
read Murray & Son. I had not yet become the person who had to nod yes at MGH when my father asked if he had
cancer, to make the decision against extraordinary means after his last heart attack. When this photo was taken, he had
not yet grown old, his collars large, his step hesitant, his shoes unshined.
Mother was still alive, and her mother who really raised me had not died as I was to learn in a letter I received at the
front. The girl who wrote every day and for whom the photo was taken had not yet become my wife, and we had not
yet been the first in our families to divorce two years later.
I had not yet seen my first dead soldier, had not yet felt the earth beneath me become a trampoline as the shells of a
rolling barrage marched across our position.
I had no idea my life would become as wonderful or as terrible as it has been; that I would remarry, have three
daughters and outlive one. I could not have imagined that I actually would be able to become a writer and eat — even
overeat. I simply cannot re-create my snapshot innocence.
I had not had an easy or happy childhood, I had done well at work but not at school; I was not Mr. Pollyanna, but life
has been worse and far better than I could have imagined.
Over 60 we are fascinated by the mystery of our life, why roads were taken and not taken, and our children encourage
this as they develop a sense of family history. A daughter discovers a letter from the soldier in the photograph in
England and another written less than a year later, on V-E day. She is surprised at how much I have aged. I am not.
I would not wish for a child or grandchild of mine to undergo the blood test of war my father so hoped I would face as
he had not. In photos taken not so many years later I have a streak of white hair. It is probably genetic but I imagine it
is the shadow of a bullet that barely passed me by, and I find I cannot enter the snapshot of the smiling soldier who is
still stranger to me, still innocent of the heroic harm man can deliver to man.
Murray, Donald M. “The Stranger in the Photo is Me.” The Boston Globe, August 27, 1991.
1. What is Donald Murray saying in his piece? (What are his main points?)
2. What is the tone/emotion/feeling you get from reading this piece? How do you know?
“The Stranger in the Photo is Me” Essay
For your next essay, you will model your writing off of Donald M. Murray’s “The Stranger in the
Photo is Me.” While you will be writing in a similar format as he did, your material, your tone, and your
reflections will obviously be different. You need to bring in one, important picture that you want to write
about. You can be any age and doing practically anything, but you need to be in the picture. You need to
actually bring the photo in as we will each scan it into the computer and attach it to the paper. You will
get the original photo back as soon as you scan it.
Once again, you do not have to have the same tone as Murray (disappointment, regret, nostalgia).
Your experiences have been different than his, and because this is a reflective essay, your essay will
sound different than his.
You should follow the same “road map” as Murray did. Each of the following sections can be as
long as you need them to be, but they each must be at least one full paragraph. Below is the format I’d
like for you to follow:
Introduction:
Are pictures and or memories important to you or not? Why? (Consider the exceptions as
well)
Body Paragraphs (2-4): (Break the information up as you see fit)
Choose a photo you want to focus on. Who is in the picture? What are you doing? Where
are you? When did this picture take place? What life was like the day the photo was taken? How
has your life changed since the photo was taken?
Conclusion:
Is the person in the photo a stranger to you now, or are you very familiar with the person
still? (Obviously you are still the same physical person, but have you changed as a person?
Consider your morals, values, habits, etc.) What advice would you give to that person in the
photograph? What advice would you give to those who came after you in your photograph’s
situation?
Be creative—you do not only have to answer these questions.
Here is an example to get you started. Please note that this person did not have the exact assignment as you,
therefore his/her essay will not match the assigned paragraph parts exactly.
Example:
I try to convince myself that I don’t care that much about the past, and yet I always find myself dwelling on old
photos of my friends and myself. I can’t seem to help it. There is much more to think about when it comes to
tomorrows; there is such a great expanse of them yet to come, but the not so great accumulation of yesterdays
keeps pulling me back. There is something almost unsettling about the photos. As I look, it’s almost as if I do not
know who the people in them are anymore.
Taking a second look, the people I see in the snapshot are indeed strangers. My friends are caught in the
childishness of freshman year or younger. They seem so changed now, and yet they are the same. And I am, to me,
the strangest of them all.
There is a photograph of me standing in the teen center. I remember the exact moment the candid was taken, yet
nothing else from that day. In another, I am being held up in the air by a group of friends in a classroom. I cannot
remember the occasion, but even now, studying the image, I am lost on the edge of a memory and time ceases to
exist.
In the photos I pass from clear-skinned, to acne ridden, to clear-skinned once more. Rather fortunate, for I never
knew just how that would turn out.
In other snapshots I am dressed in various dance costumes. I am a fish, a snowflake, a vine, the yellow brick road. I
loved to dress up and become something I was not, something I could never be. To this day I believe I continue to
become what I am not and hide.
The picture that haunts me the most is not one where I am pretending in costume, but in plain clothes. It was taken
in the school hallway in front of room 103 during freshman year. Despite the blurry image, I can make out the
content, peaceful look on his and my face. It seems strange to think that I could be pretending in such a seemingly
perfect moment, and yet I am. Instead of opening my eyes to the truth, I turn my head and glom to the naive belief
that the only thing the two of us really need is love to make everything work out in the end.
My arms are on his shoulders, his on my waist. Our foreheads touch, faces mere inches away despite the everprominent school rule. The pockets in the photo that are probably empty will eventually be filled with notes of
broken promises, hurtful words, and painful memories, along with a mind full of unpleasant thoughts. At the
moment the girl is smiling, still blissfully unaware of the impending loss of her child-like innocence.
I try once more to enter the photograph and become that smiling girl on that day in freshman year. To feel as I had
then once more, carefree and so eager to be in his company.
When the snapshot was taken, my life was almost perfect. I was not yet the girl who would taste the bitterness of a
friend turning her back on her time and time again, eventually leading to a relationship of hate. Not yet the girl who
would one day around Easter call her grandmother to inquire about dinner, and hear her grandfather tell her that
her great-uncle had passed away the night before. When the snapshot was taken, I was still a young girl who was
untouched by grief.
My father’s best friend had not yet succumbed to cancer. I had not yet had to endure the sound no child ever
wishes to hear: my father’s voice breaking from grief and pain as he hangs up the phone.
I did not know, nor could I have had an idea, of what the next two years would hold. The sorrow, the joy, everything
in-between. I had no way of knowing that experiences with death would come more often, or that a painful
breakup was in the cards. I had no foresight about the odds of finding someone sometime later who would make
me extraordinarily happy.
Was there any way to foresee that the meeting of a friend-of-a-friend would become a serendipitous moment I now
look back upon and smile about? How could I have known that day in freshman year that New Year’s Eve, the
dawning of the year 2009, would change my world? Could I have predicted that over the months following a heartwrenching break up that I could find someone who could help me begin to heal, and learn to be truly happy around
him?
Were I to go back to that moment in time, forever suspended, I would not wish to know what I do now. As much as
I sometimes wish to return, I cannot. Even in doing my best to replicate that moment, I cannot. That moment is lost,
time moves on, except in that snapshot of frozen reality. The moment is lost, and so is the girl captured in it.