Embedded Assessment 1 Creating a Photo Essay

1. Embedded Assessment 1Creating a Photo Essay My Story in Five Faces Connie Schultz Parade Magazine February 19, 2012

2. Introduction In my early 30s, I copied a George Orwell quotation and tucked it into my wallet: “At age 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”A promise? Or a warning? That depended on how I lived my life. Orwell was right. Even in the faces of strangers, you can tell who has spent more time laughing than frowning, who rolled with life’s tumbles and who never recovered.Like maps that are repeatedly redrawn, our faces track the march of time. Line up photos of the same face at different ages and a life story unfolds like a graphic novel. This is my story in five faces.

3. Age 12 I’m in seventh grade, and I want to be anybody else. Specifically, I want to be Aretha Franklin. I’m convinced a Toni home permanent and a neighbor’s artistry will transform me into Ashtabula’s Queen of Soul.She cuts my long, straight hair and wraps what’s left around small pink curlers. She squirts the smelly chemicals all over my head. My scalp burns for what feels like 12 hours. I think I look amazing. Not Mom. She takes one look at me and collapses on the sofa, fanning herself with her apron. The next week, I line up for my school portrait wearing my new Afro and pointy collars as big as window shades. Before the flash goes off, my gym teacher shakes her head and says, “Girl, does your mother know what you did to your hair?”

4. Age 21 I am an asthmatic, and a prescription drug makes my face puff out. I am so self-conscious that if someone points a camera at me, I pucker up and cross my eyes. I want to be less dependent on others’ opinions of me. I’m failing miserably.A fellow staffer on our college newspaper wears a leg brace and a special shoe with a five-inch platform. He walks with a limp, and he hates the goofy pictures of me. I don’t know this until he surreptitiously shoots this photo and pre­sents it to me as a gift. “If I looked like you,” he says, softly, “I’d smile all the time.” Then he walks away.Thirty-three years later, this ­photo still hangs in my home office as a reminder to get over myself.

5. Age 37 After 15 years of writing freelance stories at my kitchen table, I get my first newspaper job. Weeks later, I’m a newly single mother living with my two kids in an apartment half the size of the house we’d called home. I want to be fearless, but I am scared to death. See the fear in my eyes? I am also stronger than I know. Like so many women, I have to learn, one crazy day at a time, that if I act brave, the courage will come. And it does.

6. Age 45 Crinkles fan out from both of my eyes. I couldn’t care less. I’m starring in Act II of my own life. I’m a newspaper columnist, a woman paid to give her opinion. After a decade as a single mother, I’ve fallen in love, too, with a man who has the nerve to push back on independent me. I insist I don’t need him to wait on me—ever. He sits me down in his kitchen and says, “You are not giving up your right to vote or to own property if you let me make you a cup of coffee.” For the first time in 45 years, I am speechless.I want to be younger but only because my heart aches with a single truth: When you meet the love of your life in middle age, the odds are you won’t celebrate a ­golden wedding anniversary together.

7. Age 53 I’m three years past Orwell’s ­deadline. The worry lines have won the territory between my brows. Starbursts punctuate my eyes. That’s what a lifetime of grinning brings. There are worse fates.I’ve not succumbed to any tinkering. No surgery or needles for me. This is not to judge other women. I’m just not big on volunteering for pain. My husband is taking this picture, which explains my smile. He still makes my coffee.“Honey,” I say to him over a recent game of Scrabble. “When I’m old, will you still love me?” He doesn’t even look up. “Honey,” he says. “You’re already old. And I still love you.”We laugh like crazy, and I don’t want to be anybody but me.