My Great Grandmother, Being Defiant

I COME FROM a long line of Bavarian dairy farmers. My great great grandfather came to America from Bavaria around 1860, with half a dozen milk cows, and end up in Kansas. (I wish I knew more about that adventure). He had a son in 1865, my great grandfather, about the time he moved the family farm to Missouri, perhaps because of a good deal on some land. He died in 1885, and his son, my great grandfather took over and ran the dairy farm until his death in 1913, and in the picture, he is front and center, looking straight at the camera, wearing work clothes. The photo, taken between 1910 and 1913, is obviously intended to show off the business; all the wooden milk wagons and horses are lined up in front of the big wooden barn, with about fifteen people, my family and their hired hands, posing for the camera, which must have been a big box on top of a tripod, with a cameraman hiding beneath a black shroud. All posing, looking straight at the camera... except my great grandmother, Anna, who is off to the right, very much in the picture, but very much uninterested in posing. A serious, attractive dark haired woman in her forties, great grandmother Anna sits on a hitching post, her feet up on a wooden wagon wheel, floor length nineteenth century farm dress, her arms folded, looking away from the camera. This is all obviously nonsense to her, a waste of time, time when there is work to be done, cows to be milked. (No cows in the picture, but there ought to be). If you want a family picture, fine, we can take one at church, right after the sermon, when we're all together and dressed up anyway. Why do we need to wear work clothes, and stand in front of the barn with the hired help, on a work day? And, after all, in another hundred years, what difference will it make? Well, great grandmother Anna, that's where I, your great great grandson from the future, a sixty year old man in the year twenty fifteen, enter the picture. You were at least willing to let the picture be taken, back there in 1910 Victorian America, even though you didn't want to, even though you thought it was a waste of time, and you were even willing to be in it, though you were most certainly not willing to cooperate with it, and you wanted everyone to know it. You were obviously in control of the family, and could have stopped the picture any time you wanted to. But you didn't. Instead you sat for the picture; defiantly. And because of that, because of your willingness to think of others: I, your distant descendant in the year 2015, have you as a treasure in my life. I like to think you did it for me, as well as for the others in the picture.