Pictures of the Smiles We Left Behind
Feb. 24th, 2019 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dedalus_1947Memories light the corners of my mind.
Misty water-colored memories, of the way we were.
Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind,
Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were.
Memories may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget.
So it’s the laughter we will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
The way we were
(The Way We Were: Bergman, Bergman, & Hamlisch – 1973)
I haven’t started a long-term project in a long time. I think the last one was in 2013, when I digitized 426 vinyl record albums belonging to my brother-in-law, Greg Greaney. My approach to the three-year project was casual, often interrupted by trips, other commitments, lethargy, and fatigue. Many of the records weren’t necessarily “classics”, and my digitizing equipment required that I sit and listen to each album I was recording. This was sometimes tedious – but on the whole, I enjoyed what I was listening to, and once it was done, I was euphoric over having finished a difficult task. Since then I haven’t taken on anything new, until I received an email from my youngest brother, Alex, reminding me of a promise I made to my mother and siblings before she died in November of 2017.
My mother was always very proud of the 8-volume photo album collection she had assembled over the years. The albums began with family photos of my mom and dad in 1943, ending with pictures of Mom’s trips to Scotland and Europe with Stela and Gracie, in 1998. Decade by decade the number of albums would multiply, with each photograph carefully placed, and (almost) in chronological order. As children, my siblings and I loved looking at them with our mother – asking her the names of the relatives and people in the pictures, and questioning her about their backgrounds and current situations. It was a visual way of learning and remembering stories of our families, and long ago events associated with them. As adults we would, on occasion, borrow these albums to show our friends and future wives and husbands, and give them a glimpse into our past. However, she soon became very fastidious about lending them out after Arthur dared to alter a few of the photos, by cutting himself out of the picture. After that, my mother laid out a strict prohibition before letting them out of her house:
“!No toquen los fotos!” (Don’t touch the photos!).
For years no one dared take the albums from her house, until a few years before her death. In 2014 I asked to borrow the first 3 volumes so I could photocopy family pictures spanning from 1924 to 1980. She hesitantly agreed, but only after making me swear not to alter them in any way. Unfortunately, I took my time copying them, and one year later I received a frantic phone call from my mom, declaring that her photo albums and been stolen! She said she had a dream of our long deceased father and wanted to see his photographs in her albums, only to discover that the first three volumes were missing. She panicked at the thought that they had been stolen, and called me for help. I calmly reassured her that the albums were neither missing nor stolen, but in my care, and promised to return them the next morning. She sheepishly accepted them back the following day, apologizing for panicking, but relieved to have the photo albums back. It was only later that I realized this irrational phone call was an early sign of incipient dementia. From that day forward, I vowed never to remove the albums from her immediate reach, agreeing only to their custodianship after her death. In the months preceding her final illness, as she reviewed her will and funeral arrangements with us, she reminded me of this promise, trusting that I would care for the albums and make their photos accessible to my brothers and sisters.
At first, I took this promise very seriously when I brought six of the albums home in December of 2017, immediately adding the task of having them photocopied to my “To Do List”. But month after month, throughout the New Year, it kept slipping downward on the scale, until it lay at the lowest rung of the list. Alex’s email last month finally got me off the dime to begin investigating the feasibility of having the photo albums professionally digitized. I soon learned, however, that the cost of photocopying 6 volumes, each containing approximately 300 chronologically ordered photographs, was financially prohibitive. I procrastinated further, complaining not only of the expense, but the time-consuming hardship of taking on the task myself, using our traditional flatbed printer/copier at home. Kathy listened to these complaints patiently for a few days, and then said, “You know, there are scanning apps for Ipads and Iphones to do this quickly and easily”. I dismissed the suggestion offhandedly at first (as I usually do when Kathy volunteers technical advice), until she demonstrated how easily it actually worked on her cell phone. Using an app called Photomyne, she quickly scanned a group of photos that were then automatically divided into single prints and enhanced on her phone. They were identical reproductions of the original. Kathy had matured into a veritable technical wizard with this miraculous solution to my problem!
Since starting this new project 3 weeks ago, I’ve reproduced the contents of 2 albums, and started a third. The photos are in the same sequence and order my mother had placed them in these albums. Album #2 covered the years 1958 to 1968, and Album #3 went from 1968 to 1980. I started with these two albums because they covered the magic years of our childhoods and youth – plus, Alex had specifically requested photos of his infancy. I have to admit that as I pursued this project, I was surprised at the feelings the albums evoked in me of my parents and siblings. Foremost was a deep admiration for my mom’s devotion to Family, in the time, effort, and persistence she showed in chronicling the visual history of our family, beginning with our grandparents and ending with her great-grandchildren. Of course all parents take pictures of their children as they grow up, but I doubt those photographs are maintained in sequenced albums once those children enter college or leave home. Kathy and I stopped the practice when our two kids were in grade school. Although we continued taking tons of photos, they tended to remain in their envelopes after being developed and shared, or, in later years, stored in commercial photo-sharing clouds like Shutterfly or Amazon Photos. The critical legacy that my mother always wanted to pass on to her children and grandchildren was our family history – its antecedents in Mexico, and the life she and Dad created for us in Los Angeles and Venice. The photo albums were part of our inheritance, and they represent an awesome achievement that I’m only now beginning to appreciate.
The last emotional by-product of this project was its reawakening of my affection for my brothers and sisters. Going page by page, photograph by photograph, through these albums, old memories, associations, and feelings were evoked: the births of Eddie and Alex, birthday parties in the park with cousins and friends, moving into our first home in Venice, weekend trips to the parks and beach, First Communions, Easter Sunday portraits, and graduations. We spent a lot of time together, my siblings and I, and they were my first best friends. We played make-believe games, sports in the street, and walked to and from school together every day. Our daily interactions consisted of arguments, laughter, fights, and triumphs we have long forgotten – but the photos still retained a residue of those old feelings. Since our mother’s death, we’ve tried to carve out some time when we can meet together – just the six of us – to share and clarify old memories, or just talk about how we are, and what we’re doing. I had forgotten, but siblings have their own way of communicating and relating to each other, when not influenced by the presence of strangers, friends, or even spouses. It’s our own private language. We’ve modeled our approach on the practice used by my wife’s siblings of meeting for lunch to celebrate an individual or group birthdays. I suppose it’s a way of ritualizing my Mom’s wish that we would always remain a family, united and interdependent. The photo albums are a means of reaffirming those connections, and a testament to our mother’s love for us.
Misty water-colored memories, of the way we were.
Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind,
Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were.
Memories may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget.
So it’s the laughter we will remember
Whenever we remember
The way we were
The way we were
(The Way We Were: Bergman, Bergman, & Hamlisch – 1973)
I haven’t started a long-term project in a long time. I think the last one was in 2013, when I digitized 426 vinyl record albums belonging to my brother-in-law, Greg Greaney. My approach to the three-year project was casual, often interrupted by trips, other commitments, lethargy, and fatigue. Many of the records weren’t necessarily “classics”, and my digitizing equipment required that I sit and listen to each album I was recording. This was sometimes tedious – but on the whole, I enjoyed what I was listening to, and once it was done, I was euphoric over having finished a difficult task. Since then I haven’t taken on anything new, until I received an email from my youngest brother, Alex, reminding me of a promise I made to my mother and siblings before she died in November of 2017.
My mother was always very proud of the 8-volume photo album collection she had assembled over the years. The albums began with family photos of my mom and dad in 1943, ending with pictures of Mom’s trips to Scotland and Europe with Stela and Gracie, in 1998. Decade by decade the number of albums would multiply, with each photograph carefully placed, and (almost) in chronological order. As children, my siblings and I loved looking at them with our mother – asking her the names of the relatives and people in the pictures, and questioning her about their backgrounds and current situations. It was a visual way of learning and remembering stories of our families, and long ago events associated with them. As adults we would, on occasion, borrow these albums to show our friends and future wives and husbands, and give them a glimpse into our past. However, she soon became very fastidious about lending them out after Arthur dared to alter a few of the photos, by cutting himself out of the picture. After that, my mother laid out a strict prohibition before letting them out of her house:
“!No toquen los fotos!” (Don’t touch the photos!).
For years no one dared take the albums from her house, until a few years before her death. In 2014 I asked to borrow the first 3 volumes so I could photocopy family pictures spanning from 1924 to 1980. She hesitantly agreed, but only after making me swear not to alter them in any way. Unfortunately, I took my time copying them, and one year later I received a frantic phone call from my mom, declaring that her photo albums and been stolen! She said she had a dream of our long deceased father and wanted to see his photographs in her albums, only to discover that the first three volumes were missing. She panicked at the thought that they had been stolen, and called me for help. I calmly reassured her that the albums were neither missing nor stolen, but in my care, and promised to return them the next morning. She sheepishly accepted them back the following day, apologizing for panicking, but relieved to have the photo albums back. It was only later that I realized this irrational phone call was an early sign of incipient dementia. From that day forward, I vowed never to remove the albums from her immediate reach, agreeing only to their custodianship after her death. In the months preceding her final illness, as she reviewed her will and funeral arrangements with us, she reminded me of this promise, trusting that I would care for the albums and make their photos accessible to my brothers and sisters.
At first, I took this promise very seriously when I brought six of the albums home in December of 2017, immediately adding the task of having them photocopied to my “To Do List”. But month after month, throughout the New Year, it kept slipping downward on the scale, until it lay at the lowest rung of the list. Alex’s email last month finally got me off the dime to begin investigating the feasibility of having the photo albums professionally digitized. I soon learned, however, that the cost of photocopying 6 volumes, each containing approximately 300 chronologically ordered photographs, was financially prohibitive. I procrastinated further, complaining not only of the expense, but the time-consuming hardship of taking on the task myself, using our traditional flatbed printer/copier at home. Kathy listened to these complaints patiently for a few days, and then said, “You know, there are scanning apps for Ipads and Iphones to do this quickly and easily”. I dismissed the suggestion offhandedly at first (as I usually do when Kathy volunteers technical advice), until she demonstrated how easily it actually worked on her cell phone. Using an app called Photomyne, she quickly scanned a group of photos that were then automatically divided into single prints and enhanced on her phone. They were identical reproductions of the original. Kathy had matured into a veritable technical wizard with this miraculous solution to my problem!
Since starting this new project 3 weeks ago, I’ve reproduced the contents of 2 albums, and started a third. The photos are in the same sequence and order my mother had placed them in these albums. Album #2 covered the years 1958 to 1968, and Album #3 went from 1968 to 1980. I started with these two albums because they covered the magic years of our childhoods and youth – plus, Alex had specifically requested photos of his infancy. I have to admit that as I pursued this project, I was surprised at the feelings the albums evoked in me of my parents and siblings. Foremost was a deep admiration for my mom’s devotion to Family, in the time, effort, and persistence she showed in chronicling the visual history of our family, beginning with our grandparents and ending with her great-grandchildren. Of course all parents take pictures of their children as they grow up, but I doubt those photographs are maintained in sequenced albums once those children enter college or leave home. Kathy and I stopped the practice when our two kids were in grade school. Although we continued taking tons of photos, they tended to remain in their envelopes after being developed and shared, or, in later years, stored in commercial photo-sharing clouds like Shutterfly or Amazon Photos. The critical legacy that my mother always wanted to pass on to her children and grandchildren was our family history – its antecedents in Mexico, and the life she and Dad created for us in Los Angeles and Venice. The photo albums were part of our inheritance, and they represent an awesome achievement that I’m only now beginning to appreciate.
The photos also brought back forgotten memories of my father. Albums 2 & 3 are especially important because they documented the extent of his active interactions with all of us – right up to Alex’s childhood – before he died in 1971. Album #2 started at a pivotal year for my Dad, because it marked the beginning of his professional career as a studio photographer, with a steady 9 to 5 job, and his devotion to being an actively involved participant in our childhood activities – weekend outings, organized sports, family reunions, and travel adventures. Dad was always present for us during those childhood years, and we took his kind and patient demeanor for granted. The tragedy of his early death was not so much our loss, but the fact that he wasn’t around to see the growth and development of his two youngest sons, Eddie and Alex, into happy youngsters, smart students, independent men, and mature husbands and professionals. I see aspects of our father in all my brothers. In Arthur’s artistic eye, in Eddie’s kind and compassionate sense of humor, and in Alex’s analytical approach to problem-solving.
The last emotional by-product of this project was its reawakening of my affection for my brothers and sisters. Going page by page, photograph by photograph, through these albums, old memories, associations, and feelings were evoked: the births of Eddie and Alex, birthday parties in the park with cousins and friends, moving into our first home in Venice, weekend trips to the parks and beach, First Communions, Easter Sunday portraits, and graduations. We spent a lot of time together, my siblings and I, and they were my first best friends. We played make-believe games, sports in the street, and walked to and from school together every day. Our daily interactions consisted of arguments, laughter, fights, and triumphs we have long forgotten – but the photos still retained a residue of those old feelings. Since our mother’s death, we’ve tried to carve out some time when we can meet together – just the six of us – to share and clarify old memories, or just talk about how we are, and what we’re doing. I had forgotten, but siblings have their own way of communicating and relating to each other, when not influenced by the presence of strangers, friends, or even spouses. It’s our own private language. We’ve modeled our approach on the practice used by my wife’s siblings of meeting for lunch to celebrate an individual or group birthdays. I suppose it’s a way of ritualizing my Mom’s wish that we would always remain a family, united and interdependent. The photo albums are a means of reaffirming those connections, and a testament to our mother’s love for us.
