The lady in the frame

I did not mean to be away from this space for so long, and despite my best intentions to show up here, Sunday after Sunday, without fail, life does have a way of pushing me here and there, to corners and days where deadlines are not met and plans just go pfffft. So I sigh as I surrender to what is and I tell myself I should do better next time, try again, harder, do better.

Here I am, in November, and it is but apt that I talk about faded frames in faded rooms because, well, there is something about November that makes it easy do just that. Also, I just came from an antique shop, on the most random of days, where everything was lovely, misty. There were clusters of bowls from shipwrecks, a long wooden table with beautiful carved details that I can only presume was a quiet witness to many grand dinners (oh, the stories it would tell if it could only talk!); there were armoires, old-fashioned vanity dressers, wooden beds with hand-embroidered linens from a long time past, huge mirrors with metal frames that curved here and there, bathrooms with bathtubs that looked like they belonged to someone’s glorious past, at that time when women wore corsets and men serenaded them from beneath bedroom windows.

 And then there were photo frames, precious ones with convex glass, and a cluster of it stared back at me proudly, almost defiantly, as if to ask if I had seen anything so lovely this week? I hadn’t, I answer back silently, as I’ve been too busy, but you are all beautiful, I tell them in my mind. I am itching to bring one or two home, these frames are the type that will fit into any space — modern or otherwise. I wish I still had an empty wall. But all frames were sold, just waiting for their new owners to pick them up and maybe it is a good thing because like I said, I hardly have any empty wall left.

What do the old and wise say about a beautiful something from the past? That always, it comes with stories, with memories, a soulfulness to it that anything sparkling and brand-new beside it will have yet to earn. Like a life well-lived, attached to something old (most any of it anyway) is a patina that is unique, and downright intriguing. Knowing exactly where it came from, perhaps some old home, makes it all the more covetable, and this is precisely why someone one I know (but shall not name) bought a beautiful photo frame, a prized find that came when she wasn’t even looking. It was authentically ancient, beautiful in every way that mattered, and she chose to display it in a place of honor in the master’s bedroom, facing their bed. In it she had positioned a photograph of her loving parents, by then both already deceased.

Time passed, and one day she decided to take down the frame. I do not remember too well why — if it was to change it with another frame more beautiful, or to hang a painting instead — that part of the story escapes me. Anyway. What is relevant is that when she did, her husband was overjoyed. And only then did he tell his story.

Apparently, sometimes in the wee hours of the morning he would wake up to paddle across the hall to the comfort room, and upon his return to bed be unable to sleep. He is a brave man, by any measure, but courage does have its limits. He recounted how, intermittently through the years, he would see an unknown lady come out of the frame, sit at the foot of the bed, and stare at him. No, it was not his mother-in-law, not even when she was probably younger. This was a woman he never met, someone neither he or his wife knew. Who could it have been?

As stories go, the wife brought up the matter with some friends and an antique dealer, who knew exactly what to do. Handling it gently, he took the frame apart, and discovered that the wood backing was actually double. Prying it open he found, just as he suspected, a faded photograph of a woman. The husband confirmed it was the same lady who would descend from the frame, to sit at the foot of the bed, and stare at him.

Since then, there have been several theories. Maybe the husband looked like someone from the ghost’s past. Maybe she was so attached to the frame that she lived in it. Maybe the frame was a door to another time and space, if that is at all remotely possible. Who can say for sure? What I do know now is that old things have to be basked in daylight — frames and mirrors especially. Something about the yellow sun and blue sky is believed to detach spirits from things they may inclined to cling to. Or so that is what the wise and the old say. I do not dare question the wisdom of that.