Headed off to Howe Library in Hanover, NH tomorrow to deliver three of my photographs to the Elden Murray Competition. I was fortunate last year to win a couple of ribbons for the entries below. Always enjoy participating and seeing all the great photographs the Upper Valley has to offer.
Tonight we celebrated Christmas at my house. I finally gave my friend, Joan, my pugs Vader and Waffles’ breeder, the two scrapbooks of photographs and blog entries that I had compiled for her.
She greeted them with the glee of a child. Her face lit up and her blue eyes twinkled in the same way that my five-year-old niece Tori’s does when presented with a surprise. I love this about Joan, a childlike glee, that despite her age, lights up her face and the world around her when she is excited by an animal, a gift, a delightful piece of news. She squeals and blushes and those around her find themselves swept up in her exuberance.
Yet, as excited as she was, she approached each volume with reverence. The cover of the first featured a picture of Vader and her, one of the first I had ever taken; the second, one of the last. She turned the pages of each as if they were the Old and New Testaments. She could only glance through their pages – each binder is four-inches thick, comprised of all the blog entries I had written last year pertaining to Joan and the pugs as well as all the photographs I had taken of Pugdom and the events we had attended together. She scanned the quotations I included, noted a few pics of the dogs, complained about a few of her and expressed her pleasure at the hours of viewing ahead.
Earlier, when we were out to dinner, Joan confessed how difficult life still is now 15 years after her husband Charlie’s death. “Sometimes I have to force myself to get out and do things,” she said.
Life creates its share of wounds, leaves holes in all of us. Joan, I think, fills hers, in part, with her pugs, filling her life, literally, with fulfilling their needs. Sharing this with her, I fill some of my own holes. I look at her childlike wonder and her joy and I see the love I poured into those scrapbooks. The feelings reflect back to me. The loneliness each of us feels, she for the husband she lost, me for the family I have yet to establish, dissipates. We find in our friendship with each other and the animals that we love, a salve.
When I was a little girl, my Uncle would bring his friends home from the Coast Guard Academy to my grandparents’ schoolhouse. One such friend was Gary. Gary adopted my grandparents’ as his own parents and they accepted him as a son. He eventually purchased a farm above the schoolhouse. He has rented it out over the years and while there were chickens, sheep, and goats there for a while, in recent years the barn has stood empty and is in a state of decay.
As a child, the barn was filled with my grandfather’s antiques. I would love to go there and look around. My grandfather used to collect glass telephone insulators – a beautiful teal green in color. We would often go antiquing on the weekends and he would bring objects back to the barn. He also stored a number of cardboard cones there and he would help me fashion dolls out of them. I haven’t been inside the barn in years, but it no longer looks safe. The roof is caving in, but it still projects a certain beauty, like an aging model whose skin may sag, but who never loses that great bone structure. Only, that’s not quite true, the structure of this building is giving in, giving up, and eventually it will probably have to come down. I already know some people who were checking it out for the wood, although as far as I know Gary has made no such deal. I will be sad the day it finally happens. We already lost a couple of barns at the farm where my Dad grew up, taken down because they too were falling in and were no longer safe. The hole where they were offers a great view, but it is still a hole, a part of what once was a leaving, breathing entity, now amputated.
Not only are old barns a thing of beauty, but old memories are, too.
I am five-years-old. The darkness enfolds me like a warm, comfy blanket. A soft light shines from the other room. I am tucked in my cot next to my parents’ double bed in the barn wood room of my grandparent’s schoolhouse.
“Put the kids to bed and we’ll bring out the ice cream,” my Uncle Bobby jokes, but he comes in to rub my feet before I fall asleep. It is something I remember in the years to come, first, when he is my boss at his granite company and later, when our families go through a falling out. Things are better now, but in the dark times, I remembered moments like this, when he was just my uncle and I was a little kid. The thing about special memories like this is that they can be a glue and a bridge to hold relationships together and to help cross a gulf until things are okay again.
I love my uncle.
I’m not sure where this picture of us was taken, but we spent a lot of time together when I was little. He was in the Coast Guard Academy and he would bring home friends to my grandparents’ schoolhouse. My parents and my brother and I would travel down to camp out with them for the weekend.
When I was older and my uncle married, his wife Lynn pierced my ears with a needle and some ice. She taught me how to make Christmas ornaments out of walnuts and cotton balls so they looked like little mice. She taught me the words and hand signals to a song we’d sign around the campfire “His Banner over Me is Love.”
When Bobby and Lynn had children, they would come down to our house and swim in the pool and we would eat big family meals around my grandmother’s large dining room table at the schoolhouse.
I don’t remember this photo, but it is a rare shot of us together, but I have memories to fill the gap.
I didn’t have time to take a new photo with my uncle for this project, although he only lives 30 miles away. I see him often when I visit my 92-year-old grandmother, who now lives with him, and when they travel down this way to visit us. We even go out to eat together at Cockadoodle Pizza Café, our local haunt. Instead, I chose to recreate the setting and the substance of the photo, but this time with my constant companion Alfie. I love how she studies me in this photo. This is her natural stance.
Growing up, neither side of our family was particularly a dog lover. My uncle got his first dog, a black lab named Daisy about the same time I got my first pug Vader. They both died within weeks of each other. When my Uncle Bobby interacted with Daisy, I saw a side of him that was more playful, less serious. He would get down on the floor and rub her belly. My grandmother said he cried when Daisy died.
Dogs bring out the best in people. They are a catalyst for creating warm memories. In the summer, I now often bring my pugs to my uncle’s pool. He always surprises me with his warmth towards them. They seem to make him smile. His genuine affection towards these creatures and our mutual appreciation of them are another bridge and a glue that binds us. I cross it and know love.
I'm not sure if this post will do any good as many of you are reporting having difficulty viewing my last couple of blog entries while others of you are having no difficulty at all. If this message does manage to make it out into the world, I wanted to let you know that I have made my web people aware of the issue and we hope to rectify it soon. I will continue to post and hope that they will be accessible to all of you shortly. Thank you for following and checking back in.
My self-portrait project raised some issues for me when it comes to body image, but being judgmental of my body is not the only way to be hard on myself. I was reminded of that today.
It was one of those cliché-ridden days. The kind where I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and never should have gotten out of it. But I did and by afternoon had already missed an important interview for work because I had the wrong day. Tonight I had another appointment and was then supposed to head off to my photography class, but when my appointment ran long I realized I would be getting to class very late. I could choose to still go and miss a substantial amount of class, which could be disruptive, or call up and cancel. I chose the latter, but felt guilty about it. First, of all I really respect the teacher, who has become a friend, and second, I had actually worked hard on the assignment this week – taking the photos on color and light that I posted yesterday. I worried that I made the wrong choice and then I worried some more.
How could I have missed the appointment earlier in the day? Was I forgetting things because I was overworked, overbooked? Was I wrong to have taken the photography class in the first place? Was there any way I could have left the appointment earlier and not have been late for class? Should I still have shown up?
Everyone, I’m sure, beats themselves up once in awhile, but I don’t seem to know when to call it a day. By the time I was done questioning myself I couldn’t tell what I really wanted in the first place – to be at class or to go home guilt free? What’s wrong with me? I asked again and suddenly mid-thought, I realized: No one’s upset here except you; no one else is holding you accountable. This is Kim on Kim and you are a hard taskmaster. Your appointment ran overtime, you chose not to show up late, you let the instructor know. It’s over, move on. Let yourself off the hook.
I was scared. When things were laid bare and I could see the monster, I discovered it was me. A sobering thought with a happy flip side: just like I learned that I can be more forgiving of my body, I can also be more forgiving of other aspects of myself. I have been judge, juror and jailor to a woman trying very hard just to be free. Perhaps now I can be liberator instead.
About the photos: I wasn't sure how to handle these photos. The child photo shows me in the tub and as I have already mentioned, I've never been too happy about sharing that type of photo. It also was pretty revealing, so I didn't feel comfortable showing it in its original form. It seemed like such a childhood shot required something similar as an adult, but I wasn't comfortable with a real nude. Instead I set up the camera and took this adult shot, which shows a little skin, but nothing too risque. I'm still uncomfortable, however, with seeing myself in such a sensual way, and chose once again not to share it on Facebook. I used some filters to change the photos to black-and-white and mask some of the more delicate elements. I was going to use these two shots to write more about sensuality and the body, but after today I realized there is more than one way to be laid bare, more than one truth to be discovered in these photos.
The adult shot not only suggests sensuality, but vulnerability. I think many of us consider vulnerability to be a weakness and try to avoid feeling this way. It's dictionary definition means being open to harm. But, vulnerability is also a pure and honest emotion and there is a beauty in it. To look at my reflection in my photos and my actions is to be laid bare and to be made vulnerable. I am trying to find the beauty in what I see and to be kinder to this child and this woman in every way.
Writing Prompt: In what ways are you hard on yourself? How can you be more forgiving?
Most of my family lives in a 30-mile loop of each other – a circle from Bethel to East Randolph to Randolph and back to Bethel again. It’s rural Vermont at its best – woods and pastures, dirt roads, dairy farms, cemeteries, schoolhouses and country stores. I traveled this loop today, chasing the light to capture images for a photography assignment on color and light. Sometimes because I don’t have a house of my own I feel dislocated – my life, a story without a setting. But, that’s not true. I am rooted in this town, grounded in its soil. I have memories of two sets of grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins living, working and playing here; now, siblings and nieces and nephews do the same. We abide here. And, sometimes like today, the light shines upon us and I remember how beautiful it all is and how lucky I am to call this place home.
Proverbs 18:24 reads, “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
I am blessed to have such a friend. I first met Sheila when I moved to Bethel in fourth grade, became best friends in high school and roommates in college. Calling her my best friend or even my sister doesn’t come close to pegging our relationship – although she’s both. We share memories and tears, inside jokes and boisterous laughter. We are each other’s mirrors, consciences and memory banks. When we’re together our lives are in mortal danger – we may just die someday of laughter!
Tonight we spent a night on the town, consisting of dinner and a movie. (Okay, I know I saw a movie yesterday with my Mom, but anyone who knows me won’t find this fact surprising. I see a lot of movies!)
I wanted to see Amour, one of the few Oscar picks I hadn’t seen so far. From the previews we knew it was subtitled and promised a lot of shots of actors staring off into space, what we didn’t realize was that it was a movie dedicated solely to watching an old lady die. I’ve read all the reviews and understand we may be in the minority here, but we just didn’t see any subtext, no layers of meaning, just a chronicling of death and so, we did what we always do when faced with something so serious. We went out to dinner and laughed our heads off. It says something about our maturity that we didn’t start this raucous display earlier while still in the theater. Give us a pat on the back please! But as we sprawled out on two comfy sofas in the restaurant’s lobby waiting to be seated, we dissected the movie, somehow managing to understand each other, as we always do, between snorts, knee slaps and bursts of laughter.
This picture of the two of us was taken 25 years ago in our sophomore year at Middlebury College and is one of my favorites. It is how I always see us when I think of our friendship. Sheila looks maniacal here, me like I’m stoned on laughter. We loved this photo of ourselves so much, even back then, that we printed out a score of them, mailing out one a week to Late Night with David Letterman with the hope that he would invite us on his show for our own segment of Stupid Human Tricks. “Andy Warhol says everyone has 15 minutes of fame, this should be ours,” we wrote on one of the photos. Needless to say we never made it on Letterman and he doesn’t know what he missed. We are a pretty special pair!
It was a long hard week and I had an assignment to complete today for my photography class. I decided to head to a nearby town to take some pictures. My mother chose to tag along with me and make it a girls' day: lunch at Molly’s Balloon, a great local restaurant, followed by our scouting the town for photo ops, and finishing up with a viewing of Safe Haven, a totally over-the-top chick flick based on a book by Nicholas Sparks.
There’s nothing like taking your Mom along to work, school or on an assignment. We stopped at several stores along the way and at each one she’s announce in a very proud voice, “We’re on a photo shoot.” Thanks, Mom.
I’m not sure I got the best shots in the world, but I sure had fun. Something happens when I’m with Mom; people seem to open up to us. We went in one store where the shopkeeper at first seemed quite formal. Before we left she was sharing with Mom about her mother’s dementia and Mom was wishing her well. I think it may be Mom’s smile or the way the two of us always seem to be laughing when we’re together or our friendly banter back and forth that makes people seem to want to talk to us.
Then again, maybe it was their chance to brush with celebrity – we were on a photo shoot, after all.
Dogs have a way of cheering you, even when they are no longer there. Last week in the middle of a very bad day I pulled into the McDonald’s drive-thru for a cup of tea and saw this sign: New, $1 Fish McBites. I had to smile in spite of myself. When my pug, Vader, was alive McDonald’s fish fillets were his obsession. He seemed to sense when we were anywhere near a drive-thru and would start to make tiny whines until his feast materialized. He would have loved these bite-sized morsels and just thinking about his joy brought joy to my joyless day. I had to snap a photo and capture the moment. I bet there are a lot tastier pleasures than $1 Fish McBites in the after life, but I had a feeling Vader might give them up for a spell to share this treat with me. I felt my Little Man’s presence in the car and like any good dog he brought his Mistress some needed comfort.