My camera broke three days before we left for vacation and I felt as if someone told me I couldn’t bring my arm with me.
I tried having the following argument with myself: maybe this means you’re (I speak to myself in the third person) supposed to step out from behind the lens and experience life instead of recording it.
It didn’t work. (Mainly because that argument is a crock.)
My camera does not cause me to separate from the events around me at all. The reality is just the opposite. My camera causes me to engage deeply in what I see. Tiny moments that may have otherwise gone unnoticed become forever etched in the colors of my memory and large overwhelming events are suddenly broken down into manageable pieces.
I walk through days of usual and ordinary and I see things that are anything but. Light becomes a commodity when you’re a photographer and it takes on shapes and forms that brighten even the darkest days.
So I tried another approach.
I dug out my old Canon and one prime lens and I shot entirely in manual the whole week. I wanted to see what would happen if I was limited by my equipment and returned to the basics.
And wouldn’t you know? I learned something.
I learned that it’s me who makes the pictures, not my camera. I am the artist and my camera is my tool. It’s my paintbrush or mound of clay.
So do I miss my Nikon? Hell yes. But does it matter?
Not at all.
Last September I wrote about how summer slipped away from me and how I didn’t feel I had experienced all I had hoped to. So when the first early ninety-degree day rolled around in June I couldn’t wait to get in the water. You see—as much as I love the colors and the feel of the crisp air in the autumn, and for all the fun of quiet snow-filled mornings in the winter, and even all the colorful promise that springtime holds, for me—nothing even comes close to summer.
The liberation that comes with the extra hours of light is heady for me. Light has always been the key to my moods. Perhaps it’s the artist in me, or maybe it’s some scientific physical need for the ultra violet. It hardly matters.
Light makes me happy.
So I’m going to ignore the sad fact that June 21st is behind us and eek every last moment of daylight out of the next eight weeks. You can expect posts that will include barefoot and chlorinated children and all kinds of grilled food.
There will almost certainly be multiple images of my first vegatable garden ever and descriptions of lazy, pajama-clad mornings.
I expect evenings in the cul-de-sac out front with the neighbors and a few road trips.
Whatever the light looks like where you are, here’s hoping it’s filled with joy.
I’ve been a little blocked about writing lately (in case you hadn’t noticed).
Frankly, I sort of feel like I set a bar for myself with the portrait series last month. I was proud of that work and I felt like there was substance to it. Each time since then that I’ve sat down to write, the minutia of my life emerged and it seemed, well, unimportant.
But I miss writing when I don’t write. And I feel adrift when I don’t carry my camera.
And really, it’s all about the minutia anyway.
The moments that make us smile in the midst of the laundry. The sweet things our children say to each other when they think we aren’t listening.
The first ripe tomato of the summer.
The neighborhood kids running outside in bare feet and pajamas when the ice cream truck drives by.
So minutia it is.
I’ll tell you about the braces that are being made for my toddler’s feet. And how I’m sad for him and happy that it’s not something worse all at the same time. I’ll tell you about the first girl that broke my son’s heart and how I was transported back to middle school, only this time it was worse because it was happening to someone I love.
I’ll tell you about dumpster day and how much I love it.
I’ll tell you about how last Sunday I planned out all our meals for the week, purchased all the ingredients and relieved about half the stress from my life in the process. I’ll tell you about a wonderful book I just finished and about a self-portrait project over on Flickr which is inspiring me daily. And about a baby quilt made by a group of women who have never met for a baby most of them have never held.
It’s these things that make up my life and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This exercise in defining one’s self outside of being a mother was much more difficult when I turned the camera on myself.
I had no idea that the moment I became a mother the way I would view myself would be forever altered. For me, removing ‘mother’ from the list of things I am changes the color of the entire list. Everything I do, each decision I make—no matter how small, every personal choice is connected to how it will touch my boys. But I believe that the more complete a mother is as a woman, the more well-rounded an individual is, the stronger she can be as a mother.
So in this spirit I will tell you some things about myself here.
As a small girl asked the question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ my answer was always ‘I’m going to be an artist’. And it took me until I was over forty to be able to understand that in fact, I have become just that. My choice of medium changes and my output and productivity wavers, but creation and creativity bring me joy. I am passionate and emotional—about everything. I am straightforward and funny. I love being a woman and I’m proud of my accomplishments. I value kindness and good intentions. I am disorganized and unfocused and quick to get frustrated. I believe that growth doesn’t end when you grow up. I am serious and spiritual, and, yes, I am a mother.
The other entries in my In Celebration of Mothers project can be found here and will continue throughout this month. Thank you for reading.
I’ve made a lifetime worth of impulsive decisions in my forty-one years. I can tell you stories of lucky ones and mistakes alike. I’ve come to terms with most of them and I struggle with the rest. I believe there’s value in each decision in that I stand where I do today.
I’m not talking about predestination or fate. They were choices after all. They were my choices that make up the chapters in my story. If I have regret then I call it a lesson learned. If I relive a poor decision, I clearly have work to do. If I make better choices—it’s progress.
Somewhere along the way I abandoned my ‘throw caution to the wind’ attitude in favor of a more guarded style. The impulsive adolescent grew into a young woman and the decisions became weightier. The young woman become a protective mother and my decisions would impact the stories of my children. The gravity of parenthood made for more judicious appraisals.
A difficult lesson but a lesson learned—caring for others requires care for one’s self. With no reserves or personal interests a mother is an incomplete parent. But how far is too far? Sacrifice is inevitable. Compromise is reasonable. But to what extent?
I’m faced with a decision in my life. And the words I keep repeating to myself are ‘trust yourself’.
So that’s my plan.
