Except for the Snapshot

My friend Kim took beautiful photos at Vacation Bible School years ago (like 7-9 years ago!) and dug them up last week to share with us. I'd never seen any of them before. How I love them.

His hands. Ahh. Ouch. The concentration. The vise-grip hugs. Those cheeks.

If you have photos of someone who died, I encourage you to pass them along to family. It will hurt and help and heal all at the same time.

Got to love the one of Margaret at the end! I assure you I've NEVER seen that look before.

Cicada Springtime

When Jack was turning 5 and Margaret was 2, we had the 17 year Cicadas here in Virginia. The only time I’d experienced them before was, well, 17 years earlier when I was a teenager. I didn’t give them much attention then, just flicked them off my towel when they interfered with “laying out” in my bikini in the backyard.

In 2004, however, I was in my 30’s and I got into cicadas BIG-TIME. I knew it would be the only time they would appear during my kids’ childhood, and I wanted to make the most of it. So while some drivers were freaking out and running into lampposts when wayward cicadas got into their cars, I was letting Jack give his "favorite" ones rides to and from the preschool playground so they could have “a change of scenery.”

We would search our tree trunks for signs of cicadas emerging from their shells, or exoskeletons. It was a-ma-zing to see that in action! We put up with the incessant noise of their mating calls, because we found the red-eyed creatures so fascinating. Jack held the live ones cupped loosely in his hands, and collected hundreds of empty shells in an old spaghetti sauce jar.

I remember looking out the kitchen door one day at his stricken face. He clutched his jar tightly as a live cicada crawled up his neck toward his ear. “It crawled all the way up me but I couldn’t get it or I’d ‘dwop’ my exo'skeya'tons!” he said, in his serious little voice after I’d scooped the huge insect off his scrawny little neck. That jar still sits on the dresser in Jack’s room; in fact, it freaked out a German exchange student who slept in there last August. She had never seen such a thing and was afraid “the creatures” were alive.

So we made the most of the cicadas. We bought Jack a cicada t-shirt, which he wore for the next 5 years. We discussed how some people were celebrating our cicada spring by eating them…covered with chocolate…but we never tried that. I took my all-time favorite picture of Jack covered with the cicada shells. The entertainment value the bugs brought to this stay at home mom and her kids during those long spring days was well worth the time I had to spend later, shoveling rotting cicada carcasses into the trash can with a snow shovel.

You see, the cicadas didn’t live long. They came out of the ground, molted, courted, mated, laid eggs, and died. Start to finish? 4-6 weeks. I remember talking to the kids about what I considered to be the cicadas’ pathetic life cycle. I mean who wants to wait underground for SEVENTEEN YEARS just to come out, sing a few songs, lay some eggs, and then DIE?????

We did the math and figured out that Margaret would be 19 and Jack 21 when they came back. And Good Lord, I would be in my FIFTIES! It would be a very long wait, but I enjoyed thinking that in 2021 we would reminisce about our Cicada Springtime.

But now Jack won’t be here to see them, and I’m probably going to need to hibernate underground at bit myself that spring just to get through the ordeal. Because never in a million years did it cross my mind that both my kids would not be around to see the cicadas again. I mean, I worried a bit about myself, since my mom died at 46, but I barely even allowed myself to go THERE in my mind.

And Jack’s short time on earth, followed by what is going to seem like a hell of a long wait for his mom, dad, sister, family and friends to endure until we are together again, makes 17 years not seem so bad.

Worth 1,000 Words?

In a nod to the whole "kids have it so easy these days," "I used to walk 5 miles uphill in the snow to school" movement, I will add my two cents.

My kids are totally spoiled when it comes to the use of my not very fancy but very useful digital camera. Something happens? Grab the camera? Want to take a video? Go for it!

When I was little, we had an Instamatic camera. I've shared in the past that we would get little film cartridges of 12 or 20 pictures that started on the 1st day of school in September and went all the way through Christmas and Easter. With 3 kids and at least 3 major holidays for the one roll, the likelihood of my being photographed or getting my grimy little hands on the camera were pretty slim.

In fact, as the youngest of 3, I was pretty low in the documenting pecking order anyway. Half the pics were usually blurry, and that's IF someone remembered to put the little flashbulb cube on top. I complained bitterly to my mom about the injustice of it all and she would just shrug, eat another gumdrop, and banish me from the kitchen while she and her girlfriends talked about "Grown-up matters."

When I was able to sneak the camera out of the house, I would try to get all artsy by photographing a crocus, some forsythia, or our cat. At some point my mom forbade us to take any more pictures of "Animals or Scenery."

Now some parents in the 70's did have cool cameras with, like, lenses and stuff. They were the ones who had awesome black and white closeups of each child, and they probably even got a few delivery or post delivery pics in the hospital. They developed their own prints and didn't stick to the one or two rolls a year rule.

We were not that family. And we went straight from the Instamatic, to the Polaroid, to the Godforsaken DISC, so things didn't really improve until at least the 90's. I've already shared with you that I wish we had more pics of my mom.

But back to my kids. I was uploading from my camera today and found 45, yes 45, pictures of either our dog, or a cantaloupe. I think it must be a special cantaloupe. Tell me if you think these constitute "Animals and Scenery" or at least "Animals and Still Life."

So I guess they are spoiled. The good news I think they have creative flair AND I didn't hear a peep of fighting out of them for at least an hour.

Picture This

I try to put a picture with every post, but I can’t always come up with one. Sometimes the photos of me are flattering, other times not so much. I’m not too happy that the recent pictures of me show significant signs of aging. Photoshop isn’t my thing, but it would be nice to touch them up a bit.

So why don’t I just leave the pictures of me out altogether since the kids and the dog are much younger and cuter and are such willing subjects? Because I’m the mom, that’s why.

After my mother died, I searched through piles of photos, absolutely hungry for images of her. I found quite a few from her younger years—homecoming queen, college student, young bride-- or as I used to so eloquently say to her, “Back when you were pretty, Mommy!” I had a collage made for my dorm room wall, all featuring pictures of her, but still I wanted more.

I watched our few home movies, by then converted to VHS, but I saw only one fleeting image of her, merely a second long. Her voice, which I forgot two days after she died, remained elusive as I listened to tiny answering machine tapes in the hopes of hearing it just one more time. My friends still had her voice in their heads, but for me it was gone.

It seems that moms just aren’t in that many pictures. Either we are always the ones taking them, or we avoid the camera because we think we won’t look good.

Indeed, our kids sometimes wield the camera and snap pictures straight up our nostrils or of the cellulite on the back of our thighs. Not pretty. Every picture Molly takes of me looks like a surprised Hillary Clinton. This is one of the LEAST crazy looking ones she's taken of me...

More likely, however, child photographers will take pictures of Lego creations or pets. I don’t mind, since cameras are digital and images now limitless, but that didn’t go over very well in the 70’s when I was growing up.

One roll of film usually carried my family from the first day of school through to Easter, so my mom didn’t look too kindly on what she considered “wasted” pictures taken by the kids.

My personal favorite was my series entitled “Cat in a Paper Bag.”

Unfortunately, none of the cat showed. Mom finally put her foot down after yet another set of blurry hamster pics and made the NO ANIMALS or SCENERY rule. To this day, I have a hard time taking a picture without a person in it.

In the 80’s, we got more leeway and camera rights and we got my mom in a few more shots, but I will always regret that she died during the Disc Camera era—crappier, blurrier pictures there have never been.

I still can’t seem to get it together enough to have professional pictures taken of my family. I guess it’s too late to get those gorgeous, artsy pictures of the kids with naked hineys or tiny hands curled around mine. 7 ½ and 10 years old would be pushing it, right? But I do try to have my little camera ready to capture special moments when they arise.

And I’m determined to make sure the camera turns around on me, too.

When I look at shots of myself, I may see wrinkles, a stubborn lack of exercise and an inch of gray, but someday my kids will just see…MOM.