Posted in photos

Upon Photographing My Son

It’s not unusual for me to take photos of my son. I have a lot of them. A LOT of them. I took one of him today picking up dog poop in the back yard.

I like to take pictures of him, I think because it is tied to my fear of loss and my hatred of growing older and my tendency to hoard things, including memories. Every snapshot captures a moment, and when I look at it later, I remember the circumstances under which I took the photo. Someone was angry and only pretended to smile for the camera and then later we had ice cream and that fixed everything. Or the last time we all went on an outing somewhere before the place closed and was torn down.

I may or may not have an irrational fear of losing things. Places, people, products. They discontinued my soap recently. It’s just one in a long line of products that have been taken away; my favorite flavor of Kool-Aid, my favorite jarred spaghetti sauce. A true hoarder would have had a case of the soap the hallway, so the loss might not be felt for a year or more. Me, I had one bar left when I found out. I’ll find something else that I like – maybe not as much, but it’s just soap. I will adjust to the loss of my soap.

I have two specific photos I’ve taken in my life that I would call morbid. One of was of my grandfather, in his casket. It didn’t occur to me that people didn’t take photos at funerals, but I was just a little kid, I owned a camera, and my parents said it was okay. All the flowers were so pretty; why wouldn’t you take a picture? But looking back, it is an odd photo. I remember taking it. I remember my grandmother looking at me, and me thinking she was checking to see if I was crying. My cousin was crying. I felt guilty because I wasn’t. All that comes back to me when I even think about that snapshot. The other morbid photo was one I took of my son when he was 15 months old. We were taking him in for surgery that morning, to get ear tubes to prevent the constant infections he’d had since he was born. Horribly common surgery for babies, but you have to sign all those papers that say you understand the risk, and any parent who doesn’t break out in a cold sweat signing those may need some kind of intervention. I took the photo the morning we were going in for the surgery. I couldn’t not take one. He was happy, in his red PJs and had bed-head. That’s how I would want to remember him; that this was how he looked, right up until the moment of whatever fate had in store for him (and us.)

Luckily, the surgery went fine, changed our lives for the better, and he just turned 13 last week. I still take his picture all the time. Some part of me just wants to capture all the memories so that I won’t forget, won’t ever forget. Places and people and products get taken away from me all the time, and I guess the only way I can fight back is to take pictures and store them on hard drives, DVDs, shoe boxes and in photo albums. I hoard memories, and if I take a picture of you, don’t get annoyed with me; I’m trying to hold on to you tightly the only way I know how.

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Suldog Meme’d Me

You know, all I wanted to do was have a nice quiet evening at home, eating snack foods and trying to figure out the perfect seed songs for Pandora so it will only play songs I adore. I actually have one good list going.

So Suldog tagged me and I’m supposed to respond to this chain letter meme and then drag many of you into it as well. I’m going to be kind of random about who I pick, so don’t feel bad if I leave you out. Feel blessed. And please God, no tagsies backsies. I will probably not do this again, because when I figure out how hard it is to find 7 people that I feel comfortable tagging, it makes me feel bad. Don’t make me feel bad, people.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog; some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

HERE ARE THE SEVEN FACTS!

1 – I was once the Chief of Police in my town.

I won an essay contest and got to be the Chief of Police. I didn’t get to DO anything, of course, but I did get the grand tour of the station, and I got to ride in a cruiser to lunch with the Mayor for a day, my friend Kim, and the Fire Chief for a day, my sister Deb. We RULED! (The next year I won the Mayor for a Day role, but I think the Police Chief gig sounds much less plausible.

2 – I made a video of my gerbils and put it into a digital photo frame on my desk and it plays the video in a loop so that it looks like I have pets in my cubicle.

I think that one doesn’t need much clarification

3 – I have made it to age 43 without ever doing recreational drugs of any kind

I’m too afraid of going to jail to ever do anything bad – I’ve always had an unnatural fear of getting in trouble. I don’t like confrontation. It was easier to just avoid the illegal stuff – I had friends who used to smoke pot but they respected my not wanting to, and just never asked.

4 – Nobody has ever been able to teach me to play cribbage.

They have tried, and I don’t get it. I’m not stupid, I pick up games quickly, but for some reason I have a massive mental block when it comes to cribbage.

5 – When I ran a BBS back in 1987, there was a secret (!) section of it that contained ASCII porn. That’s right, pictures of naked people created using keyboard characters. Racy!!!

My current website doesn’t contain any porn. Trust me, I’ve looked.

6 – When I was a teenager I never wore shorts because I thought everyone was staring at my hairy legs.

I have dark, lush arm and leg hair. I’m apparently devolving back into an ape. Lucky me. Even when I shave, I feel like you can see it. Even though you probably can’t. But I refused to wear shorts because of it.

7 – Even though I own a dog upon whom the sun rises and sets, I don’t like any other dogs.

Other people: I don’t like your dog. I LOVE my dog, but he’s extraordinary. Yours is not. He is dirty and smelly and he’s just a stupid dog. Even when I’m standing with my dog right next to you, I don’t like your dog, I only like mine. I’m sorry, I’m just not a dog person. I’m actually afraid of dogs, although I’ve gotten much better. A growling dog used to reduce me to a sobbing mess.

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So those are my random facts. I’m sure I mentioned some of them here already. I left out a couple of juicy ones because, well, I have relatives who read my website.

I have to go leave them comments telling them they are tagged, but I’m going to go with

Christine

Reid

Bunnythefoo

Chuck

Mr. Crunchy

Mr. Dump

Jennie

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