The Little General

A Post a Day in May 22/31

Do you know who you are? Do others?

My brother, Charles, has undertaken the herculean task of digitizing all our late father’s slides and then sharing them with the family. This results in periodically receiving a dump of digital photos in folders over the internet — at first a bit daunting, but then pure delight to scroll through the years represented by the photos on the screen.

Seeing the very early days of our parents’ life in Canada (they immigrated from England in 1953) is fascinating (the fashion, the cars, the cigarettes, the canvas tents!), but what really catches my eye and captures my heart are the pictures of my siblings and me as very young children. OK, I’ll be honest: The pictures of me as a youngster are most interesting to me, the one illustrating this post particularly so.

I look so determined with my arms crossed, but also so jolly with that impish smile. It brought to mind this description of me by my friend Jeff, from my master’s program, which he wrote on the occasion of our graduation:

“I always remember Amanda striding up and down the 4th floor hall during the program’s first residency, in October 2004. That was when I began to think of her as The Little General. She would march past the open door of my tiny residency room, occasionally stopping to share some sharp insight about the program, or a succinct summary of a theory. It was her beguiling way of collecting her thoughts as she prepared to attack whatever assignment was about to shrivel before her focus and smarts. Amanda’s and my friendship deepened during the following year, the second residency, and the final months of the program. She is one of those people whom I aspire to be more like.”

In the photo I must be about aged four, so more than four decades prior to Jeff’s description of me, and it makes me wonder just how innate that “Little General” character is to me. Certainly, Jeff is not the only one to notice it or name it in some way. My partner, Val, often characterizes me as “the Queen”: imperious in tone, benevolent in action, and now with laugh-lines etching my face, because I do like to laugh. 

Whether nature or nurture makes us who and how we are, it is both curious and fascinating when others name us as we seem to truly be. And for that reason, among many, family photos are precious: The (few) good ones offer a glimpse into who we were and, maybe, offer the answer to why we are who we have become.  

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.