Monday, November 29, 2010Photos from the 90'sI attempted to do something yesterday, which was kind of remarkable in itself. But what I chose to do troubled my sleep and got into my sub-conscious in a way that I wasn't expecting.I have boxes and boxes of photos. And I'm trying to, very gradually, get them in some kind of order. I manage to spend about 20 minutes on the project once every three months (which puts me at an estimated completion time of about 2060), but I figured a rainy afternoon in which I'm too sick to do anything else would be a good time to hack away at it. I picked a box with pictures from the '90s. And over the next couple of hours I saw a long, bittersweet slide show of the first six years or so of my kids' lives, highlighted by many birthday parties, vacations, visits to grandparents, school events. I saw the first months of baby pictures for Spencer evolve into his first birthday party, held proudly by his godfather. I saw him blowing out his second set of birthday candles out at Travel Town, surrounded by an assortment of people I can barely remember. At two, he was not yet in school so I hadn't formed the close network of friends that I have now, so the people at that birthday party were all friends from our former lives... from Gavin's school days mainly. Then Taylor was born, and I have a series of him and Spencer and Gavin in the hospital room, Spencer grinning proudly like he'd created his brother all by himself. I have a couple of sequences of them at four years old (Spencer) and about one (Taylor). And then a few later at about five and two. But it's obvious that life got pretty busy in those years and the only time the camera came out was for special occasions. I found some pictures of a camping trip I took Spencer on, up to Northern California up by Tahoe. It was a reunion of some of my friends from college, all of whom (including myself) turning 40 that year. We felt so old. And we all had our four-year-olds with us. Most of my friends and I tracked exactly when we had kids, whether it was a hormonal alarm clock going of or just plain understanding that we'd never be more ready than we were right then. Since none of us were ready, we all collectively held our noses and took the plunge at the same time. So the pictures from that series show Spencer's first touching of snow, and a piggy back ride on the shoulders of an old friend from college. There was a romance between Spencer and that friend's daughter, a romance that time and space conspired to thwart. But it was a poignant moment when they all came back down last summer for the wedding and the teenagers from that camping trip got to reconnect. There are many pictures of the kids and I visiting with my mom, and many pictures of the kids with friends. Lots of birthdays, trips to Disneyland, trips with friends up to the long-lost, much lamented Mira Mar in Santa Barbara. Trips to the snow up in Angeles Crest to sled and build fluffy little snow people. And there is even a set of pictures of me doing something without the kids -- a trip I took with my mom to New York in 1998. We both acknowledge that was the pinnacle of our relationship and our pictures reveal our mutual exuberance, our sense of adventure and extravagance. Something happened to me on that trip. It was at a performance of The Lion King, which I cried all the way through. I remember being pierced with the understanding at that moment that my life needed to have more of a sense of joy in it. That I had lost, somewhere, the wonder, the buoyancy, the excitement. All the pictures show happy joyful kids. And adults. But there are shadows in the pictures that of course I did not see at the time. Occasions that seem so happy in the picture, I remember being extraordinarily stressful behind the scenes. And looking at these pictures with my older, more informed eyes, I notice a few things. First of all, I'm always juggling. I'm juggling the kids, or have a wary eye cast over on something that needs my attention. My (now ex) husband rarely appears in these pictures, and not because he was snapping the shutter. He just wasn't there. Except for some early birthday pictures, the only time he appears is when we're in certain groupings, with certain people, and I now see those images with a different understanding altogether. And of course, I know that the closer we come to 1998, the closer we are moving towards changing these kids' lives indelibly. I look back at my old house and the pictures taken there and remember thinking that would be forever. I remember thinking that my partnership with my husband was solid and strong and that we'd be making our decisions together all the way through college and beyond. But now, of course, I know that the course shifted. The paths diverged. And at the end of that box of pictures, I found a set of shots showing the duplex I moved into at the very end of 1998. A sweet little two story duplex. The pictures are from when I'd just moved in. My mom is there helping me furnish it; I'd left all unduplicated furnishings behind, so as to impact Gavin as little as possible. I had my brand new rug from Ikea on the living room floor (the same rug that Roger also bought, when he also separated from his wife, on the exact day I moved from Gavin's house). I do not yet have my bookcases. But the outline of the new life was there. A new life. A new, and much needed, beginning. The kids are beaming in my arms, and there's an unmistakable lightness to all of us. I have a picture of me goofing around with Taylor (the only one of the whole box of hundreds of pictures where I'm seen being goofy and fooling around). And even though you'd think that these pictures would be laced with pain and stress and fatigue, the complete opposite is true: there is a light, there is a joy, there is the buoyancy that I'd missed for oh so long. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 9:30 PM  
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