Through A Different Lens

I recently found an old photo album of my parents. As I went through it I found so many great images of them in their early years. I even found a photo of my grandfather as a young boy that had to have been taken in the late 1800s. I know it is him because my father had written on the photo “father” with an arrow pointing to the boy.

I love this image of my mother on her wedding day. I know it’s their wedding day because I saw other images of her in that dress at what was clearly their wedding. In this shot she appears to be standing in their new home. Again I am able to piece that together from other images in the collection. In one, they are standing outside next to a very modest home. They are holding hands. Mom looks beautiful in her white dress, still perfect from the wedding. Dad has his tie loosened and his sleeves rolled up. They almost certainly have just come from the church or the wedding reception to see their new home. They are 22 years old and they are beginning a brand new chapter in their life.

This picture makes me smile every time I look at it. I can see how happy she is. I imagine how excited they both must be. I wish she was here to tell me more about that day. How she felt standing in her new home with her new husband.

Knowing my father, and seeing him in the other photo, I can’t help but wonder if he is worried about things? How will he provide for his new family? Can he afford the mortgage payments? Will the Navy send him off to war? There is no one who was there that day to tell me the story.

Over the years since my children were born we have captured literally thousands of pictures, Countless pictures of happy times. All the wonderful memories captured in photographs. Our lives have been good, although when I look back there have been dark and difficult times as well. Those are not captured anywhere in the photos. Those are the memories that live between the photos of Christmas’ together, birthday celebrations, and weddings. Those are the times we try to forget. Like a deep cut, the wounds eventually heal. The scar that is left is a constant reminder of the pain. Those are also the times that have had some of the biggest impacts on our lives but I have talked so little about them with my children. Probably because I actually know so little about the real reasons myself.

This has led me to new project. One that has pulled me away from this blog and even my photography a bit. I started writing a memoir. My story about some of the more impactful things that have happened in my life. It is a rather overwhelming challenge for a guy like me. I have never been a writer, although the fact that I am writing this I guess suggest that I am a now. Far more challenging is the fact I spent most of my life avoiding any discussions of feelings. So to try a tackle such an ambitious project is a bit scary for me.

I wish I knew more about what my father was thinking when I was a boy. Why he could never share his feelings. I wish I had asked him to tell me more about his childhood when I saw him break down in tears recounting the punishment he would frequently get from his father when he misbehaved. I wish I knew my Uncle Herbert who died in the war when he was 19. What was he like and how did his death at such a young age change my father?  I wish I knew if the stories about my grandfather, my mother's father, and my “Aunt” Clem were true.

And I wish I knew what happened between my parents so many years ago when I was a baby, or perhaps before, that nearly tore them apart.

There are so many things that have shaped, in some way, who I am today that I will never know.

So I decided to write a memoir for my children. To tell them the things that I never told them. So perhaps they can understand just a little bit more about the events that have happened in our lives. That has shaped who they are. So maybe, together, we can learn something.

And perhaps I am writing my memoir to be understood and to do that I must first understand myself.