October 2011. Who Am I?: The author is drawn to a vintage image in a copper frame. And his imagination begins to wander.

Who am I?  For I know not.

My life and memory were in total darkness until someone discovered my image in a shop—an image of my youth—and suddenly, through the curiosity of one from another time, my life’s light started to return.

I remember sitting for the daguerreotype operator, who placed the back of my head in a vice so I would keep perfectly still for the interminable time it would take for my image to become affixed permanently on the small metal plate. A century or more later it would be found in a shop in New Orleans. My home I suspect.

I was proud in my youth, as my image suggests.  I adorned myself with a gold watch and chain—a diamond stickpin in my cravat.  With my hat and my gloves, and a swagger in my step, I walked with pride down the streets of the city.  In spite of having the blood of Africa flow through my veins, I was a free man, or as we said in French, gens de couleur libre.  My father was a White gentleman of means who loved my olive-toned mother, even though they could never wed.  While not all avenues of society were open to me, I was an educated individual, one who could read and write in English and French, and I was versed in the classics.  What greater token of love can be displayed by a loving father than that of an education?

I chose this frame for my picture because of the diminutive yet unique design; the American Eagle and the British Lion, the flag of The Union and the British Union Jack, in harmony and at peace, at least on the surrounds of the frame.

There were problems in my life around the time I visited the daguerrian’s studio, and the shadow of a war loomed overhead like the darkening clouds of an approaching storm.  Did I have a place in this conflict?  Did I in fact survive?

The rest of my life is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.  The weave is incomplete, the tapestry not yet complete.

So here I wait, my existence still partially in the shade, yet enjoying this moment of warmth from the sun as it shines upon a bit of my life.

But still I wonder—what was my name and what became of me?  Do you know who I am?

Contributor Gilbert Estrada lives in Metairie. By day he is employed in an administrative capacity at the Tulane University School of Medicine. After hours he he had time to wonder about things.

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