Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Pictures

I don't know why, but my family never hung pictures. There were no pictures of us, hanging on the mantle. There were no pictures of ancestors, hanging in the hallways. There were no polaroids, hanging on the refrigerator door. We didn't even have albums. All pictures went into a giant cardboard box that was hidden away--filled with everything from tiny black and white pictures from my grandmother's childhood, of unnamed relatives we will never know, to us. My friends houses were filled with pictures--they were choc a bloc everywhere. Tacky portraits (it was the Seventies after all) cute baby pictures, baby shoes dipped in metal to preserve them. The houses were living memorials to those who lived within.

I didn't mind so much when I was little. But sometimes I wondered. Didn't my parents like what we looked like? Were we trying to keep secrets? I never saw my parents wedding album until I was 11, digging around in the attic. And there it was, stuck in the bottom of some box. Maybe my parents thought it was arrogant to put up pictures of yourself. I don't know...

We live in the age of photos. We practically think of ourselves in photo shoots. The world has changed. But I do want my boys to be surrounded by pictures of those they love, and who love them. I want them to look up and see their history, and the history of their families. I want them to see how they were loved as babies, and how the family features spread across cousins and aunts and grandmothers. We take so many pictures these days that sometimes I feel myself shoving them into a drawer, blindly following my family tradition. But I want to change. I want to have a photo wall. I want it to celebrate Theo and Benjamin and the growth and change in our family. I want them to see their cousins and aunts and uncles who can't be here--to remind them the world is full of people that love them, even far away. I want them to feel their life is celebrated--even as it is happening. So today the boys and I will start picking out pictures for our photo wall.

They will be funny and silly and serious and beautiful. They will be all different sizes and all different frames. They will be big and small and old and new and digital and film. And they will change.

Today, we will start. We will build our wall.

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