ABSTRACT
The wedding photograph rests above my desk, off to the right. There are my parents happily standing before the cake, my father gently tugging at my mother’s elbow. My father’s mother has her hands on his elbow and shoulder; his father, somewhat behind, stares intently into the camera. My mother’s mother is to her left next to my great-grandmother. My mother’s father towers behind my mother and father; in the photograph, his face looks as if it’s been squeezed into the wedge between the faces of my parents. I see all of my mother’s family: my great-grandparents, my great aunts and uncles, my mother’s brother and sister, and her many cousins. On my father’s side I only see his parents and two sisters. And of course there are los colados, those women with thick Turkish eyebrows, that deliriously happy couple in the back. According to my mother’s family, those people were colados because they came uninvited to the wedding. My father says those people were not colados; they were members of the community who were invited by word of mouth, in the Sephardic style, to attend la boda de Albertico. And they came, expecting una Coca Cola y unas borrequitas y unos dulces de almendras y ya. They came, took their place in the family photograph, and sat wherever there was an empty seat, including at the main bridal table. The wedding couple practically had to go and stand on top of the cake.
