I have always loved photographs. Even as a kid, I wanted to record every "special event" and every meaningful person or object in my life. I got my first Kodak camera (the kind that took 110 film) when I was in Elementary School. I took pictures of our dog, my best friend, the basketball backboard my father custom-made for my sister, my parents 1970 Chevrolet station wagon (which would become the first car I learned how to drive many years later), and the great clouds of smoke pouring into the sky as a forest fire burned off in the distance.
When I was in high school, I took pictures of friends and boyfriends, and I took pictures on all of the trips I got to take as a result of being in various extra-curricular activities. I was a "small town girl," so flying to Dallas for a competition was exciting, and I took pictures of the tall buildings in the Big City because they were the first ones I had ever seen up close. I also took a picture of a "Virgin Strawberry Daquiri" because, well, because it was there in front of me, and I wanted to remember that I had ordered it.
In college, I took pictures of new friends, and I also took pictures of places. I was away from home for the first time and found myself wanting pictures of the mesas and canyons of my Hometown--I had come to truly "appreciate" them now that they were part of my past instead of my present. I would go home for Spring Break and Fall Break and various holiday breaks and take pictures of the scenery. I also took a lot of pictures of old houses. My Hometown was mainly post-WWII vintage, but the city of my university had entire neighborhoods of Victorian houses and old churches with stained glass windows and copper shingles. These were things I loved because I had never seen them before, so I took pictures.
My parents always had photo albums in the house, and I kept my photos in albums, too, but my favorite albums were the "old ones" with pictures of my parents as children and distant relatives I had never met living in houses I had never visited. I loved delving into the photo albums that recorded our "baby years." When we would visit my grandparents, I would paw through my grandmother's photo albums, fascinated by the clothes and the cars and the activities. My Grandfather in his Navy uniform, home on Leave because his first child had been born while he was stationed overseas, piloting dirigibles seeking out German submarines lurking in the waters surrounding South America. My mother, wearing Shirley Temple Ringlets in a posed studio shot. My Great Great Aunts standing in front of a WWI-era car, decked out in fur coats and hats featuring a jaunty peacock or pheasant feather. My Great Grandfather, a 32nd Degree Mason, dressed for a parade. The "Baughman Family Estate" lost during the Great Depression that is now the "Firestone Estate" (yes, yes, I could have been an heiress...)
I think it was my Grandmother's Photo Albums that sparked my passion for photographs. Whenever we brought out Photo Albums, stories got told, and I loved the stories. Photographs capture history, style, physical features, a pretty dress, but they also create a "placeholder" for someone who will tell the story behind that photo. Why was it taken? Why did the person taking the picture want to remember that particular day? Whenever we take a picture, we are doing it to record a memory. We are saying to ourselves, "I want to capture THIS moment."
But pictures are nothing without a narrator. It saddens me when I read about people purchasing boxes of "old photographs" at the Garage Sale of a total stranger. To give up your photographs means that you don't know anything about them, and that's why you can choose to part with them. But, to me, that is heartbreaking because the photograph has so much more power when there is someone there to explain it's reason for existence.
I'm not alone in feeling this way. Look at the massive industry "Scrapbooking" has become. You can't just slap your photos into albums anymore--you have to decoratively display them on acid-free paper, and you must, must, MUST include a caption or a poem or some other notation that describes why that picture was taken--why it was important.
My mother died on March 14th, suddenly, from complications of a particularly high-risk surgery she had chosen to undergo in a valiant effort to "buy her more time." Sadly, the surgery only served to cut her life shorter instead of extending it. It has been a very rough month for my sister, my Dad, and me. We struggle with the decision (made collectively as a family) to opt for surgery. We struggle with not being at all prepared for the outcome. We struggle with the vastness and enormity of the tremendous hole that has suddenly been punched into all of our lives.
Since we were the people closest to her (and the people who grieve the most), we were also tasked with the responsibility of "arrangements." Oddly, this was a good thing. It kept us busy. We had things to do, arrangements to make. We had to pick out flowers, design a program for the Memorial Service, select and purchase an Urn for her remains, burn appropriate music onto a CD, write an obituary, plan and prepare food for visitors who would stop by the house after the service...
The list went on and on.
We were also assigned the task of gathering photographs to pin onto two large, fabric-covered bulletin boards that would be posted in the Chapel of the Funeral Home. So, out came the photo albums. My Dad spent an evening scanning photos of my Mom as a baby, a child, a young wife, a young mother, a grandmother. We were actually hard-pressed to come up with a comprehensive collection of her. My mother hated to have her picture taken. Our Baby Albums are filled with pictures of us with our Dad, but there are very few with Mom. She cleverly managed to avoid the camera lens. She coached our softball teams, yet the Team Photo in our albums contains only the faces of the girls--no coach. We were getting frustrated by this--saddened that our mother's "phobia" was now depriving us of something we desperately wanted to find. But, at least we had the Shirley Templesque photo, the high school Graduation Gown photo, the wedding photo, a few "Mom and babies" photos. Finding more recent photos was especially difficult. Her many health issues had caused her to gain significant amounts of weight in recent years, so now she REALLY hated having her picture taken. She would THROW AWAY photos that we sent to her if she was in them and didn't like how "she looked." Not to be thwarted, we scrounged through our own albums and skimmed through the "digital archives" on our computers.
And we found photos--oh yes, there were photos!
The one thing my Mother loved most about her life was being a Grandma. The only recent photos of my Mom always, ALWAYS involved her holding a Grandbaby or--even better--reading a book with a Grandchild. Those photos got taken and were not destroyed--not even by her. Those photos went up on those boards. We were proud of those boards. Through photographs, we captured every stage of her life and showed her engaged in the activities she enjoyed the most--all of her roles as friend, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother.
We somehow managed to survive the Memorial Service last weekend. We were all exhausted, but in a good way because it was "over" and because we got things done and did them in such a way that we think she would have "approved." We were also sad that suddenly we found ourselves with "nothing to do," and that's a bad place to be in when you are grieving.
I went back to work, my kids went back to school, and our lives fell back into their usual routines. But then I picked up my kids from school on Wednesday, and they each had our town's Parks and Recreation Summer Catalog in their backpacks. They both greeted me eagerly, saying, "Mom, Mom! There is a picture of Grandma in here with us!" They were jumping up and down with this weird, bittersweet excitement (because they were "famous" all of a sudden--this particular publication is intended to reach every household in a town with a population of 55,000). Sure enough, I flip through the booklet and find an image of my mother, with my kids, attending an "Art Show" at the Parks and Rec Art Camp my children attended last summer. My Mom was there because the Camp ended at 2:00 pm, and I didn't get home from work until 5:00 pm, so she showed up every day that week to pick up her grandkids because I couldn't be there.
It's not a good photograph. My Mother would have hated it. It wasn't "flattering." As someone who takes a lot of pictures and can be objective, I think it is a crappy photograph for a Parks and Rec publication (you can't see anyone's faces--it's basically a picture of my Mom, turned awkwardly, the back of my daughter's head, and my son with his mouth hanging open while they look at some kid's artwork that isn't particularly spectacular). But, even though it is a crappy photograph, it still spoke volumes to me--it magically-appeared somewhere I would have never expected it to appear, and my Mom's photograph is in that publication because she was doing what she always did--taking care of me and filling in where I could not, and she was smiling because that is exactly where she wanted to be at that moment when that photograph was taken.
I want to tell the 55,000 residents of my city the story behind that photograph.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Sleep
My sleep habits seem to be defined by stages in my life--by my current priorities and worries. How well I sleep, how often I sleep, how many hours I sleep--all impacted by what events are important in my life at the time. I remember being in college and pulling those "all-nighters" during finals week. Or meeting someone new at a party and staying up until all hours of the morning talking and flirting and perhaps heading to the International House of Pancakes (open 24 hours) for coffee and Belgian waffles. Finding a potential "Mr. Right," staying up all night laughing with and confiding in the closest set of Gal Pals I have ever had, and getting good enough grades to keep my scholarship, were the priorities for which I would go without sleep back then.
Eventually, children came along, and I slept the sleep of an expectant mother--someone who was "new at this." I was awakened every night at 2 am while pregnant because the growing baby inside me always chose that time of night to be most active--a portent of the fact that once he was born, he would awaken at this time of night for the first six months of his life wanting an additional feeding or some attention. I never minded (because I was "new at this," and it felt good to be "needed"). Then I progressed to the next sleep phase--the phase of "Working Mother Determined to Breastfeed Despite Having a Full-Time Job." Even after my babies started sleeping through the night, I still got up at 2 am to dutifully express breastmilk for them to have during the day while I was away. I'd go back to sleep for a few hours before getting up to start my workday, feeding the baby on the couch before I left, wearing nylons, high heels, business-like skirt, and my pajama top. During the night, I could awaken in a split second at the slightest sound, yet fall back to sleep in mere seconds, too. Nothing kept me awake except for my childrens' needs. Once they were satisfied, I slipped right back into dreamland, although this often meant that babies slept curled beside me in my bed because I couldn't be bothered to put them back in their cribs. I couldn't bear the "cry it out" method either--I worked full-time--I needed my sleep, so Mom's bed was baby's bed because it was just easier that way. Baby #2 came along, and while her older brother had been banished into his own toddler bed, there were those nights when he wandered back in to Mom's bed, where we slept as a family through fevers and head colds, bad dreams, and separation anxiety. I had a husband who worked the night shift, so there was always plenty of room in the bed for the 3 of us, although hindsight tells me that, over time, my children, my husband, and I began to exist in separate groups of 3--again, perhaps, a portent of things to come.
My children have never been "easy" at bedtime--they were always wanting "one more story" or a song, or a glass of water, or needing to tell me about something "important." Because I was afflicted with Working Mother's Guilt, I always acquiesced because I knew that bedtime was the one time of day that my children had my undivided attention. When I arrived home from work, their father left for work, so I was running errands, doing housework, and fixing dinner without help, all while trying to keep an eye on them. I was unable to provide them with my full attention--I was always multi-tasking or pre-occupied or distracted. Bedtime became their one opportunity to have me to themselves. It was the only time I sat down and stopped thinking about other things, and that was okay, even if it meant that my kids' bedtime would begin at 9 pm but always truly be 10 pm, even on a school night. That extra hour of their bedtime routine is important, and I don't have any desire to change it, even though it means my bedtime becomes midnight or later, and I survive on 5 hours of sleep a night.
Now that my children are older, the hours between 10 pm and 5 am are no longer dictated by their needs--night-time feedings, childhood illnesses, and nightmares--leaving me free to sleep uninterrupted for those 5 hours, right? Wrong. Because now I'm a grown-up, full of grown-up responsibilities, and I am shouldering them single-handedly with no one to share the burden. My restless mind is tortured by sleep. I would lie in bed, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep because of the worry--the fears. If I did manage to fall asleep, I had dreams that bothered me--filled with confrontations with two men in particular who left me with much unresolved anger--anger I was either unable to express or prevented from expressing. It would be manifested in my dreams, and I would awaken, agitated, pissed off, and ready to fight, even though the altercation was completely fictitious. In my dreams, I got to scream, and yell, and say ugly things I would never have said while awake. But, those confrontations were not helpful--they only left me upset--too bothered to go back to sleep because they were not real. If I were worried about a particular problem--like money--I would wake up, groggy, and not thinking clearly, start thinking about the problem and then, because I was only half-awake, the problem would become horrifying and insurmountable, and would keep me awake. I would eventually fall back asleep, and once I had really woken up, had my shower, and thought the problem through, I realized that my night-time panic was irrational and ridiculous, and that my sleep-deprived state had given that particular problem far more weight than it deserved. And I would be angry that I had been deprived of sleep that I undoubtedly needed because I don't possess logic and reason at 2 am.
So, for the last few years I survived on 2 or 3 hours of sleep most nights, catching up occasionally, from sheer exhaustion, a few days each week--usually on the weekends. That began to change last summer, when both my custody battle and my money issues were finally resolved. My sleep patterns changed yet again. I sleep 5 hours a night without any problems at all. I have no trouble falling asleep because my worries are, for the most part, under control. I still have the occasional "freak-out" moment like Thursday night when the hot water line to my kitchen sink burst and flooded my kitchen, and for some odd reason, I was panicked about getting a hold of my landlord the next day to have it fixed. Why I was so reluctant to call my landlord is beyond me, but at 2 am it seemed like a horrible thing. I was worried he might be out of town, and I'd have to call a plumber and pay an exorbitant amount of money before I could have hot water again. I was pissed that I was so flipping "helpless" and ignorant about plumbing, that I had to call my father to figure out how to turn off the water. I was feeling desperately like I needed to buy a house of my own--and SOON, but I'm not ready because I haven't saved up enough money yet, and the idea of packing all of our stuff up and physically moving it is daunting. I was angry at the houses for sale in my neighborhood that are 25 years old, made by a cheap-ass builder, and they all have hot water lines and cheap pipes that burst for no good reason, leaving me with no option but to buy a more expensive house in a newer subdivision with a dinky lot and a backyard devoid of landscaping that I will hate. These are my 2 to 4 am ramblings.
But last night, I slept okay. My landlord came over and fixed the water line while I was at work. The kids are at their dad's for the weekend. I spent the evening with some other Cub Scout moms, drinking Hurricanes and assembling all of our sons' various patches, badges, neckerchiefs, and other Cub Scout memorabilia into lovingly-arranged shadow boxes, to be "presented" to them when they have their "cross-over" Ceremony next week and become bona fide Boy Scouts. (So, you see, there was a plus side to my kitchen flood because while frantically yanking things out from under the sink, trying to locate the valves to shut off the water, I found the Pat O'Brien's Hurricane Mix I had purchased in New Orleans last summer! Admittedly, my son's shadow box is not yet completed, but I've got a week to finish that up without being under the influence of rum.) I slept a full 8 hours last night and my dreams consisted of mundane things like walking past my bathroom mirror and catching a glimpse of myself, only I was thinner and in better shape--perhaps a portent of my future self, now that I am diligently trying to exercise daily. In another dream I had a glimpse of the back of my friend M's head, and his hair was thinning, and I teased him about it. Again, perhaps a portent of things to come?
But at least my sleep is filled with peaceful, non-threatening images, for a change. Everyday things that really could happen, instead of crazy "drama" that I hope has been banished from my life, leaving me free to sleep, without interruption, for the first time in a decade.
Eventually, children came along, and I slept the sleep of an expectant mother--someone who was "new at this." I was awakened every night at 2 am while pregnant because the growing baby inside me always chose that time of night to be most active--a portent of the fact that once he was born, he would awaken at this time of night for the first six months of his life wanting an additional feeding or some attention. I never minded (because I was "new at this," and it felt good to be "needed"). Then I progressed to the next sleep phase--the phase of "Working Mother Determined to Breastfeed Despite Having a Full-Time Job." Even after my babies started sleeping through the night, I still got up at 2 am to dutifully express breastmilk for them to have during the day while I was away. I'd go back to sleep for a few hours before getting up to start my workday, feeding the baby on the couch before I left, wearing nylons, high heels, business-like skirt, and my pajama top. During the night, I could awaken in a split second at the slightest sound, yet fall back to sleep in mere seconds, too. Nothing kept me awake except for my childrens' needs. Once they were satisfied, I slipped right back into dreamland, although this often meant that babies slept curled beside me in my bed because I couldn't be bothered to put them back in their cribs. I couldn't bear the "cry it out" method either--I worked full-time--I needed my sleep, so Mom's bed was baby's bed because it was just easier that way. Baby #2 came along, and while her older brother had been banished into his own toddler bed, there were those nights when he wandered back in to Mom's bed, where we slept as a family through fevers and head colds, bad dreams, and separation anxiety. I had a husband who worked the night shift, so there was always plenty of room in the bed for the 3 of us, although hindsight tells me that, over time, my children, my husband, and I began to exist in separate groups of 3--again, perhaps, a portent of things to come.
My children have never been "easy" at bedtime--they were always wanting "one more story" or a song, or a glass of water, or needing to tell me about something "important." Because I was afflicted with Working Mother's Guilt, I always acquiesced because I knew that bedtime was the one time of day that my children had my undivided attention. When I arrived home from work, their father left for work, so I was running errands, doing housework, and fixing dinner without help, all while trying to keep an eye on them. I was unable to provide them with my full attention--I was always multi-tasking or pre-occupied or distracted. Bedtime became their one opportunity to have me to themselves. It was the only time I sat down and stopped thinking about other things, and that was okay, even if it meant that my kids' bedtime would begin at 9 pm but always truly be 10 pm, even on a school night. That extra hour of their bedtime routine is important, and I don't have any desire to change it, even though it means my bedtime becomes midnight or later, and I survive on 5 hours of sleep a night.
Now that my children are older, the hours between 10 pm and 5 am are no longer dictated by their needs--night-time feedings, childhood illnesses, and nightmares--leaving me free to sleep uninterrupted for those 5 hours, right? Wrong. Because now I'm a grown-up, full of grown-up responsibilities, and I am shouldering them single-handedly with no one to share the burden. My restless mind is tortured by sleep. I would lie in bed, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep because of the worry--the fears. If I did manage to fall asleep, I had dreams that bothered me--filled with confrontations with two men in particular who left me with much unresolved anger--anger I was either unable to express or prevented from expressing. It would be manifested in my dreams, and I would awaken, agitated, pissed off, and ready to fight, even though the altercation was completely fictitious. In my dreams, I got to scream, and yell, and say ugly things I would never have said while awake. But, those confrontations were not helpful--they only left me upset--too bothered to go back to sleep because they were not real. If I were worried about a particular problem--like money--I would wake up, groggy, and not thinking clearly, start thinking about the problem and then, because I was only half-awake, the problem would become horrifying and insurmountable, and would keep me awake. I would eventually fall back asleep, and once I had really woken up, had my shower, and thought the problem through, I realized that my night-time panic was irrational and ridiculous, and that my sleep-deprived state had given that particular problem far more weight than it deserved. And I would be angry that I had been deprived of sleep that I undoubtedly needed because I don't possess logic and reason at 2 am.
So, for the last few years I survived on 2 or 3 hours of sleep most nights, catching up occasionally, from sheer exhaustion, a few days each week--usually on the weekends. That began to change last summer, when both my custody battle and my money issues were finally resolved. My sleep patterns changed yet again. I sleep 5 hours a night without any problems at all. I have no trouble falling asleep because my worries are, for the most part, under control. I still have the occasional "freak-out" moment like Thursday night when the hot water line to my kitchen sink burst and flooded my kitchen, and for some odd reason, I was panicked about getting a hold of my landlord the next day to have it fixed. Why I was so reluctant to call my landlord is beyond me, but at 2 am it seemed like a horrible thing. I was worried he might be out of town, and I'd have to call a plumber and pay an exorbitant amount of money before I could have hot water again. I was pissed that I was so flipping "helpless" and ignorant about plumbing, that I had to call my father to figure out how to turn off the water. I was feeling desperately like I needed to buy a house of my own--and SOON, but I'm not ready because I haven't saved up enough money yet, and the idea of packing all of our stuff up and physically moving it is daunting. I was angry at the houses for sale in my neighborhood that are 25 years old, made by a cheap-ass builder, and they all have hot water lines and cheap pipes that burst for no good reason, leaving me with no option but to buy a more expensive house in a newer subdivision with a dinky lot and a backyard devoid of landscaping that I will hate. These are my 2 to 4 am ramblings.
But last night, I slept okay. My landlord came over and fixed the water line while I was at work. The kids are at their dad's for the weekend. I spent the evening with some other Cub Scout moms, drinking Hurricanes and assembling all of our sons' various patches, badges, neckerchiefs, and other Cub Scout memorabilia into lovingly-arranged shadow boxes, to be "presented" to them when they have their "cross-over" Ceremony next week and become bona fide Boy Scouts. (So, you see, there was a plus side to my kitchen flood because while frantically yanking things out from under the sink, trying to locate the valves to shut off the water, I found the Pat O'Brien's Hurricane Mix I had purchased in New Orleans last summer! Admittedly, my son's shadow box is not yet completed, but I've got a week to finish that up without being under the influence of rum.) I slept a full 8 hours last night and my dreams consisted of mundane things like walking past my bathroom mirror and catching a glimpse of myself, only I was thinner and in better shape--perhaps a portent of my future self, now that I am diligently trying to exercise daily. In another dream I had a glimpse of the back of my friend M's head, and his hair was thinning, and I teased him about it. Again, perhaps a portent of things to come?
But at least my sleep is filled with peaceful, non-threatening images, for a change. Everyday things that really could happen, instead of crazy "drama" that I hope has been banished from my life, leaving me free to sleep, without interruption, for the first time in a decade.
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