We all flip through photo albums now and then, letting the pictures carry us back through moments of our lives, and our families' lives. Sometimes we come across photographs fifty, sixty, even seventy years old (depending on how old we are). Black and white photos, some of them blurred, all of them bearing the imprint of rural places and simpler times.
But photographs from those years are rare—at least they are for me—and so we hold them close. They are tied to a precious past, and they capture only a few scattered moments from a family's lived experience. I keep those photographs with great care, though I'll never know who took them—a photographer passing through, a relative, a family friend. They are precious. They are almost all that remains of those days.
When both my parents died, I gathered a few black and white photographs, arranged them together in a frame, and hung it in the hallway of my home. I pass by it many times a day. Many times I stop and lift my eyes to those faces—children, young people, caught in time.
One photograph holds my gaze more often than the others, because it captures yesterday in a way that feels alive and real to me today. In it, three children stand outside in the open air, in the space in front of our house, near the well, near a vineyard of white grapes (I can still taste that sweet muscat). Giorgio and Cristina sit on two wooden chairs with straw seats. I stand between them, my hands on their shoulders, holding them steady so they won't fall. My hair is long and tangled, I wear a dark little dress, my face is serious—almost that of an old woman—my mouth closed, my entire focus on keeping my brother and sister safe.
This was the 1960s. I was six or seven years old, Giorgio was eight or nine, and Cristina was about two.
What does this photograph tell me now? My life. When it was taken, surely no one thought about what the future held for those children. But looking at it today, I say to myself: here is my destiny. Here is my present and my future. Here is my life drawn and fixed in a single moment.
And so that black and white photograph has become a color photograph of today. I am still there, beside Giorgio and Cristina—no longer sitting in simple chairs, but in two modern wheelchairs, soft pastel colors. They are children still, because the care they need is the care given to children; adults in body, but dependent on constant attention. I am still standing beside them, my hands outstretched, my gaze watchful—I try, at least—and yes, I have grown old. In me, more than in them, you see the years passing. Our hair has turned gray and white.
This photograph is the design of my life: caring for Giorgio and Cristina, always. The responsibility began then, years ago—whether before or after matters little. But as their sister, I have always been there. With a responsibility that other children did not carry. I was a child, yes, but grown old inside, forced to grow up fast, because caring for others is not a game to pass the time. It is something serious and important.
To be those invisible angels from childhood for a brother or sister with a disability. I could keep flipping through albums; today I can pull out boxes of photographs, because I have taken thousands of them—to capture every moment, every smile. But that black and white photograph speaks of a life lived together from the beginning, and by God's grace, it continues that way despite everything. I think that each of us—brothers and sisters of people with disabilities—has one or more photographs that are particularly meaningful, photographs that speak of sibling bonds, of family; of protection, of care, of responsibility. Photographs that speak of invisible angels. Photographs that speak of precious lives.