The Eyes That Fix You in a Formulated Phrase

“Mariken!” he calls, aiming his lens at me. Fixing me in a formulated phrase.
My Daddy, always with his camera. As an anthropologist, as a hobby photographer,
as a family man, documenting our lives. Boxes upon boxes. Archives of slides. I have searched through them, gathering photos of me and of them; people and things he photographed. I have woven these images together with my own documentation of
objects from my childhood, carefully selected from filled cardboard boxes in my
mother’s attic. My sister and I spent weeks clearing it out after she died.