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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

A dad called Mama
Showing his children the wonder of Florida's shaded lakes and curious insects, my father taught me the nature of unconditional love.
By Lu Vickers
[06/18/99]

Column
Kiss for luck
My daughter's eighth-grade graduation is a ritual like none I've ever experienced.
By Sallie Tisdale
[06/17/99]

Snack time with Jesus
Christian preschool turned my 4-year-old into a fundamentalist.
By Natalie Pearson
[06/16/99]

Trading places
A first-year teacher turns the tables on an unruly student.
By Esmé Raji Codell
[06/14/99]

Tough lessons
An interview with firebrand educator Esmé Raji Codell.
By Fiona Morgan
[06/14/99]

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I pull envelopes marked "summer, '98" from a box. These recent photos are perhaps the most surprising because the time between having taken them and seeing them again is short, yet in these photos I see Julian and Sonja as I never have before. When I look at them in person, I don't see how they've grown -- but put a layer of celluloid between us, and I see. I notice how thin Julian is and how long his limbs. Sonja's neck has sprouted; her belly is not so round. In these photos, I see more than Julian and Sonja: I see a second-grader, dreaming of slamming a home run at Candlestick Park; I see a girl whose drawings of cats at long last are recognized by others as cats.

The camera lends another perspective, separate from my own. A couple of men I know, both fathers of young girls, are professional photographers. Often I have seen them shoot without looking through the camera. Mark, wanting a shot of Sonja and his daughter Molly hiding under the bed, crawls on the floor, stretches his camera-holding hand under the bed, looks up at the ceiling and clicks. Jason, wanting a shot of the aftermath of a 1-year-old's birthday party -- babies among wrapping paper, torn and strewn everywhere -- reaches up above it all with his camera and clicks. They trust this other lens, which can reveal a surprise and spontaneity that a parent framing a moment cannot.

I know that if I leave the photo album I just completed in a drawer or closet, one day I will open it and discover stories I'd completely forgotten. I will turn the pages and be surprised by the faces that look up at me. Last week, I found an envelope full of photos I must not have looked at much before tucking them away. There were of me and Julian spending a day in Boston's public garden. In one of the photos, we are strolling down Newbury Street when Julian stops, mesmerized by a sprinkler spraying water over a small patch of grass, a tended corner of urban garden. He stretches his starfish hands across the spray and laughs at the water. This is something I would have never remembered.

It troubles me that I -- family photographer -- am absent from most of the pages. "This is not the truth!" I want to tell them. I realize I want proof of my attendance, the light reflected off my hands cradling a downy head, captured on paper. But I also desire consolation. I can't feel Julian's sleepy infant face burrowing into my chest anymore. I can't feel Sonja rubbing my long hair over her face like a blanket. Soon, I won't be able to drop to one knee open-armed and watch her back up, then run full speed into me. Soon, I won't sing to Julian at bedtime. Years from now my memory may retrieve these moments, or it may not. These albums are a kind of emotional insurance.

In years to come, I imagine going through these albums with Julian and Sonja on either side of me. From first baths to birthdays, they recognize little until we get to albums of later years. When they're all grown up and showing these photos to a new friend, they will no longer know whether they remember the event or the photo or the story I've told. The three will have become one.

Perhaps more than the stories themselves, what my children will remember is sitting by my side, listening. There will probably be no photo of that, no 4-by-6 to remind them of how they leaned into my shoulders. Yet these images are only props. What I hope to give them is the knowledge -- the thorough sense, the kind that can't be forgotten, the kind that resides in flesh, bones and blood -- that they were loved. And evidence of my having accomplished that is something I'll probably never find in a photograph.
salon.com | June 21, 1999

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