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the exchange

shibuya

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Uploaded on Aug 28, 2008

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Hasselblad 501CM
CZ 80mm f/2.8
Reala 100

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Uploaded on Aug 26, 2008

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Hasselblad 501CM
CZ 80mm f/2.8
Reala 100

All rights reserved

Uploaded on Aug 26, 2008

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Hank and Betty Johnson

Every spring the family would head up north to Kennebunkport, about fifty miles south of Portland, for a week of holidays by the ocean. It might as well have been the Arctic as the water was much too cold to swim in.
Every year we saw the same people - people we'd only ever see during that week. Two of them were the Johnsons - Betty and Hank.

Betty married Hank because she thought she'd caught herself a husband who'd one day provide all the little luxuries she'd always desired. Hank was a handsome man in his youth, who always possessed the entrepreneurial touch, but his rise to riches never eventuated. Some say it was Betty's penchant for the finer things in life that, ironically, prevented that from happening.

Our family first met the Johnsons in the spring of '56. I don't remember Betty ever smiling that year - it was their first holiday 'at home', and Betty was not very pleased. But as the years went on, she seemed to become much more content with Kannebunkport, although she never ceased to try to humiliate Hank with her little biting remarks.

When I was a young boy, Hank was someone I looked up to - a distinguished gentleman, who only spoke when it was necessary. Always in a suit and the hat, always stoic and unaffected by the constant criticisms. As I grew older, I started seeing him in a different light - a sad, withered man, with all the gust for life sucked out by that woman. I felt sorry for him. I did not want to be like him.

But, when I grew older and wiser, I began to understand him more, and I saw the real man that he was. He was a man that had long ago accepted his fate - no matter how much he achieved, and accumulated, it would never have been enough. He'd always have to top it next year, the gifts would always have to get more expensive, more lavish. So, he stopped achieving, he ground to a halt and watched with very personal satisfaction as Betty lived with the bitterness of her situation. He always winked at me, as if one day I'd understand.

My dad took this the last time we spent the Spring together, in '63. Three months later Hank suffered a stroke, lasted for another six, and passed away. I learned many years later that Betty cared for him until his very last day, and despite herself passing away in the early '80s, she never re-married.

Maybe they really loved one-another, in a very strange way that I'll one day understand.

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Uploaded on Aug 25, 2008

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