Note to Self-ie

We talk a lot about selfies these days, and how having so much emphasis on how we look is detrimental, especially to young girls. I agree, but I must admit it's fun to turn on my phone and discover funny selfies Margaret has taken, which I DARE NOT post here. She's 12. I'm learning, learning, learning.

I was thinking back to my middle school and high school years-- you know in the days before a "tween" was a thing-- and even though we didn't have the means to take many pictures, we still managed to capture the ugh and angst of those years pretty well.

For us it began in the photo booth.

Not the cute, 5 in a row black and white photos so popular at weddings and bat mitzvahs these days. It was a Polaroid booth inside Woolworths at the mall. As in, "Have your mom drop you off and meet me at the photo booth!" You would squeeze in with one, maybe 2 of your best friends of the week, hold really still, and hope that your fluffy, center-parted hair would make it in to the picture, but the zit on your chin would not.

When we made it to high school, the Polaroid booth morphed into our own cameras, usually of the lousy Disc variety-- a short-lived experiment by Kodak that made everything look grainy, as if it were taken through cheesecloth or a window screen, long before Instagram would introduce a generation to cool filter effects.

The REALLY, REALLY good news: "sharing" our photos mean ordering doubles. At worst, one or two people would have access to a bad or embarrassing photo. A shoe box under the bed or a sticky "magnetic album" provided a level of privacy that is a foreign concept to us today. Worst case scenario was that you might wear a jaunty Liz Claiborne felt hat to school in 8th grade and it would make its way into the yearbook.  Not that I'd know anything about that.

Maybe you passed around your summer beach pics in the cafeteria once school started, showing off your baby oil tan. I'm still peeved that an ex boyfriend kept my little plastic keychain photo from Ocean City, the kind you'd look through to see the photo illuminated at the end, because now there is no proof that I ever looked decent in a bikini, even if it was for 45 fleeting seconds in 1987.

Even though my best friend Lisa and I couldn't snap with abandon like kids do these days, because we had to buy our film and pay for developing, we spent quite a few date-less Friday nights taking pictures of each other. We came up with themes and went around  my house looking for clothes that would complement what we consider to be out "artsy" tableaux.

Note the wild and rugged theme here:

I wonder if Lisa still has her banana clip. I have mine.

Or check out the romantic theme here. A teddy bear and pearls really set the stage for romance, don't you think? Gosh, I loved that haircut!

Not sure where I'm going with this trip down memory lane, but I thank The Good Lord that I was born when I was. I think girls have always wanted to pose for the camera and document good times with friends; I'm just glad I'm posting these as a 40-something who can look back on those exhilarating, hard, weird times with a smile rather than (too much of) a cringe.

Flash

Today in the produce section I saw a cute young mom pushing her two kids in one of those plastic grocery cart/kiddie cars. A 3 year old boy and a younger girl who was probably around 15 months old. They stopped near the cucumbers and the mom went around to the front of the cart, took out her phone, and snapped a picture of them.

It was just an ordinary weekday morning, but she captured them in that moment, the little girl and boy tugging at a board book between them, laughing.

It made me think about so many ordinary moments when my kids were little, and of the clunky camera I had back then. It had a long carry strap and used rolls of film. Pre-digital, I would ask myself, "Is this event important enough to use up half a roll of film?" and later at the drugstore, "Are the yet unseen pics on this roll worthy of ordering double prints?" It was a gamble, for sure. And the clunky camera wasn't always handy for the little moments of life.

When I finally got a digital camera, 5 years into this parenting gig, I was able to capture many more spontaneous moments of mothering. I didn't worry about wasting film. I could let the kids take hundreds of pictures of the dog and their other favorite subject: cantelope.

I tried to take a decent amount of photos and little videos, considering I was the youngest child in my family of origin and have three whole pictures to show for it. I even made sure to be in pictures with my kids every now and then, since although I know my wonderful mother existed in my childhood, it's kind of hard to prove.

It wasn't until what would be the last eight months of our family being intact that I got a smart phone, and therefore had a camera with me at all times. By the time Jack died, I still hadn't grown that used to taking pics with my phone, which, as the cheapest model with no flash, didn't take great ones anyway. But now, just 2 1/2 years later, we have more iphones and ipads in this house than we do people, and there is no shortage of selfies going on daily. Plenty of dog shots, too. Blurry or not, we are capturing moments-- the monumental and mundane-- more than ever. Here are a few of Margaret and Tim when we went out for Jack's 15th birthday 2 weeks ago:

When I saw that mom and her kids in the store today, I was envious. Yes, for her healthy little boy and girl grinning next to each other, but also that she had probably been capturing those simple, insignificant/significant moments for their entire lives by just whipping her phone out of her pocket. I'm not saying that grocery trips with Jack and Margaret back in the day would have necessarily been that pleasant, but I am now greedy for many more glimpses of them, of us, of those years before we knew what we now know-- how fleeting it all can be.

p.s. A friend sent me a new photo today of us at a family mission camp years ago. That's us on the right about to make a butterfly garden.

Monday Mash-up

A HUGE Thank you to all the veterans who have served our country and to their families who have sacrificed at home!

We had a pretty good weekend around here. Friday night was my 25th high school reunion. Thanks to Facebook, I did not have to tell my story to anyone. I was so very grateful for that. Friends bravely and quietly acknowledged our loss. I know that was probably scary for them to do, but it meant a lot to me.

There is never enough time to catch up with everyone, even when a group isn't that large, but overall it felt relaxed, supportive, and un-rushed. My friend Judy and I managed to stay up until 2:30, which I consider pretty darn good.

The camera part of my iphone "disappeared" early in the evening, brought back later by helpful texted instructions from my 14 year old nephew. Got to love a teenager who can figure out in 10 seconds what I'd been struggling with all evening. As a result, I only have a few pictures. Here's one with my friend Helen so you can see my $35.00 New York and Company wrap dress. Super easy and I got to wear cushy (Aerosole) black suede boots with it. Yay for being warm and comfortable! You may remember Helen from when I wrote about her here. Love that woman!

Saturday we got our family picture taken by the amazing Dorie Howell. Dorie is a professional photographer and a reader here at An Inch of Gray. I was reluctant to get the photos taken because I was mad at myself for not putting more of an effort in when Jack was here. I mean how handsome would he have looked out in a field with the sun going down behind him? Sheesh.

We did it anyway, and my Jack necklace hopefully keeps him in the picture. Here's the first one Dorie sent us. I am freaking out at how good it is. If I had known professional photos could de-jowlify me and erase the effects of a 5-ish beer 25th reunion the night before, I would have jumped on this sooner!

Looking forward to sharing more photos with you soon.

Love and light to you as you start your week.