MYSTERY MAN AND WOMAN

This photograph, obviously a studio shot and on stiff board, has been kicking around since I was a child. There is nothing written on the back and no way to identify the couple. It is obviously an engagement or wedding photograph. The woman's dress has "mutton leg sleeves," which I understand date from the mid-1890s to 1906 when the fashion died out. I'm sure they are both very young but here, caught in time in a rigid pose, they look almost middle aged.

I took no particular interest in this picture until my son suddenly, in his teens, acquired a startling resemblance to the man in the photograph. The man is not one of my grandfathers and not one of my great grandfathers, either.

Relatives spend endless time speculating about which parent or grandparent a child "takes after" but this photograph indicates they need not bother. We each come from a vast, genetic pool so it's a toss of the dice, really.

It is what I would call a scritchy day here in Tuscany. Normally, the month when the jasmine blooms is the best of the year but not this year. It is cool and cloudy with a come-and-go wind. I have not the heart to go out into it and so have been looking through old photographs taken with old cameras. It was the photographer of the day who chopped off the man's foot in this picture, not I.

Curses! I did this early because I did not want to go out and then this just flew in the window. I have never seen one like it before. It has a wonderful sheen to its wings, not visible here. TRANSPARENT BUTTERFLY