Our new home is officially ours and the cleaning and packing has begun. There are still repairs needed before we can move in, but while I work on painting, cleaning and organizing, my motto is “don’t drive to the new house without bringing something with.”
Because we won’t be officially moving until at least July, I am packing things that do not get used very often. I’ve already taken over several garbage bags of my yarn stash, but don’t worry, if I get an emergency knitting attack I still have plenty to choose from.
The other area I’m working on is photos. I’ve been taking photos since I was a child. My first introduction to the art of taking pictures was my grandmother using her Kodak Brownie camera. The Brownie was introduced in 1900, cost only $1 and was easy to use. It was the start of our love affair with all things pictured, leading up to the current day when photos of anything can be found on the internet.
I started taking photos with my own Brownie back in grade school. My favorite is a photo of my dog Buck standing with his front paws on the picnic table. I’ve taken photos of trips, pretty scenery, all my pets, family and friends.
Oh, the days of black and white and negatives. In the days before digital, each subject was taken several times to make sure at least one shot was not blurry and the subject’s eyes weren’t closed. Film came in rolls of 12, 24, and 36 shots and it was nearly sacrilege to get a roll developed without using all the shots available. It was also nearly sacrilege to throw away any of them.
As I began to pack the limitless supply of photos in my home, I decided it was time to break that rule. My husband and I sat in the livingroom with a garbage can and began to sort. There were rules to this sorting. Each of us had a stack of photo envelopes. All negatives went in the trash. All photos of scenery that were unidentifiable went in the trash. Photos of people we barely know, in situations we couldn’t remember, went in the trash. Duplicate photos went in the trash. Unfocused photos and red eye photos went in the trash. If we were unsure about a photo, we could consult each other, but only if it looked really important.
We also had rules for photos to keep. Anything that made us say, “Ohh, look at this,” was kept. At least five photos of each deceased pet were kept. Several shots of special occasions, weddings, birthdays, family gatherings, were kept. One or two blackmail photos were kept. (Blackmail photos include really unflattering photos of a relative, or a relative or friend doing something foolish).
These were just the loose photos. Last night, I began to go through the photo albums with the same rules. It felt a bit more invasive to throw away a photo I had put in an album, but it was needed.
I felt good about this cleaning project done. Then I began to go through a storage cabinet and found all my cameras. I have a large case with my deceased father-in-law’s old 35 mm film camera along with extra lenses, tri-pod devices, filters and more. I haven’t used this camera in years, but I couldn’t bring myself to part with it. There was also my old compact 35mm film camera with the optional flash attachment and my first digital camera.
An old camera is like an old friend. We had been through adventures together, and shared memories. In this fast-paced world, my old cameras let me stop time and save that fraction of a second for the future. And even though I had just thrown away many of those moments in time, the device that saved them didn’t go in the trash.
I now use a digital camera for nearly everything and I rarely get the photos printed. I have some saved on my computer but I’ve learned that when you allow time to pass and look back on the photos in your camera, they don’t seem as important as they did in the moment you took them.
I still have some archives of photos my grandmother took which I haven’t gotten the nerve to throw away yet. Her photos seem like history; mine are just memories. There’s a difference.
Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. In a constantly changing world, I’ve learned about the importance of the present moment, and the dangers of living in the past. Perhaps that is what enabled me to throw out the unneeded photos. I know all my experiences of the past have led me to who I am in the present. The memories remain, but we can’t go back.
I’m glad my grandmother kept the family photos, and I’m also glad I didn’t inherit her throw-aways. Perhaps when I have lived my life fully and gone, someone will say the same about what I leave behind.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Ballet recital revisited
Some of you will remember a previous column where I described my granddaughter Wren’s first ballet recital. Remember the distracting feather? Last weekend, I attended her second recital. Just as before the first recital, her mother insisted this was her last performance. Dance lessons were too expensive and took too much time. She was not going to be enrolled in dance next season.
Wren is four years old. The recital was held at the Viterbo Fine Arts Center in La Crosse and it was a full house. The recital began at 7 p.m. and ended at 10 p.m. Wren’s part in the event lasted about three minutes.
As I sat in the audience, watching other people’s children perform their segments, part of me was bored. Each dance looked like the previous one, with different costumes. If you’ve ever been to a ballet recital, you know it is not exactly fine art. Polina Semionova or Fernando Bujones were not featured. However, the better side of me realized that each dancer on the stage was someone else’s Wren. Each dancer had a mother or father, grandparents and friends sitting on the edge of their seat in anticipation of their child’s moment in the spotlight, just as I was.
When I remembered this, I began to see the performances in a new light.
One dance I will always remember was called Daddies and Daughters. About 20 fathers entered the stage wearing black pants, white shirts and black ties. They were from nearly every walk of life, some tall, some short, some wide, some narrow, some balding, others young. From stage left emerged daughters from grade school to seniors to meet their daddies and dance. The easy choreography was set to a country song about a daughter growing up.
Some daughters were young and needed daddy’s help with the steps. Others were older and helped their father make it through. The look of pride the fathers held for their daughters, and the daughters held for their daddies, brought tears to my eyes. And I wasn’t the only one in the audience drying my eyes.
Finally, the moment came and Wren’s group stepped onto the stage wearing pink ballerina costumes and holding matching teddy bears. My eyes were glued to Wren, who tried very hard to remember her steps. I heard the rest of the audience laughing and looked down the line of ballerinas to see what was the cause. At the end of the line was one boy dancer, in a battle with the girl next to him over a teddy bear. The battle began to escalate and a teacher came on stage. She lifted the boy under the arms and placed him between two other dancers, distancing him from the girl whose teddy bear he coveted. The teacher exited stage left and the dance continued.
It’s always something, but at least this time it wasn’t a feather.
Though Wren didn’t do all of her dance steps, her time was to come at the finale. During the finale, all of the dancers come back on stage for a group dance. The smallest dancers were in front, and Wren was front and center, right behind the teacher. This was enough incentive for Wren to dance up a storm, still holding her teddy bear. When she noticed her father and grandpa in the fourth row of the audience, Wren tried to run off stage to greet them, but was captured by a teacher and returned to the chorus line.
When you are four years old, it doesn’t matter what kind of performance you gave, you still get roses like any star ballerina.
In the car on the way home, we reviewed the performance. I mentioned my favorite dance was the Daddy and Daughter dance. I said I imagined Wren and her daddy up there with the rest of the dancers.
“I know,” said Wren’s mother. “Wren said she wanted to do it next time. Now, I have to keep her in dance class so she can do that dance with her dad.”
To be continued ... next year.
Wren is four years old. The recital was held at the Viterbo Fine Arts Center in La Crosse and it was a full house. The recital began at 7 p.m. and ended at 10 p.m. Wren’s part in the event lasted about three minutes.
As I sat in the audience, watching other people’s children perform their segments, part of me was bored. Each dance looked like the previous one, with different costumes. If you’ve ever been to a ballet recital, you know it is not exactly fine art. Polina Semionova or Fernando Bujones were not featured. However, the better side of me realized that each dancer on the stage was someone else’s Wren. Each dancer had a mother or father, grandparents and friends sitting on the edge of their seat in anticipation of their child’s moment in the spotlight, just as I was.
When I remembered this, I began to see the performances in a new light.
One dance I will always remember was called Daddies and Daughters. About 20 fathers entered the stage wearing black pants, white shirts and black ties. They were from nearly every walk of life, some tall, some short, some wide, some narrow, some balding, others young. From stage left emerged daughters from grade school to seniors to meet their daddies and dance. The easy choreography was set to a country song about a daughter growing up.
Some daughters were young and needed daddy’s help with the steps. Others were older and helped their father make it through. The look of pride the fathers held for their daughters, and the daughters held for their daddies, brought tears to my eyes. And I wasn’t the only one in the audience drying my eyes.
Finally, the moment came and Wren’s group stepped onto the stage wearing pink ballerina costumes and holding matching teddy bears. My eyes were glued to Wren, who tried very hard to remember her steps. I heard the rest of the audience laughing and looked down the line of ballerinas to see what was the cause. At the end of the line was one boy dancer, in a battle with the girl next to him over a teddy bear. The battle began to escalate and a teacher came on stage. She lifted the boy under the arms and placed him between two other dancers, distancing him from the girl whose teddy bear he coveted. The teacher exited stage left and the dance continued.
It’s always something, but at least this time it wasn’t a feather.
Though Wren didn’t do all of her dance steps, her time was to come at the finale. During the finale, all of the dancers come back on stage for a group dance. The smallest dancers were in front, and Wren was front and center, right behind the teacher. This was enough incentive for Wren to dance up a storm, still holding her teddy bear. When she noticed her father and grandpa in the fourth row of the audience, Wren tried to run off stage to greet them, but was captured by a teacher and returned to the chorus line.
When you are four years old, it doesn’t matter what kind of performance you gave, you still get roses like any star ballerina.
In the car on the way home, we reviewed the performance. I mentioned my favorite dance was the Daddy and Daughter dance. I said I imagined Wren and her daddy up there with the rest of the dancers.
“I know,” said Wren’s mother. “Wren said she wanted to do it next time. Now, I have to keep her in dance class so she can do that dance with her dad.”
To be continued ... next year.
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