Thursday, February 7, 2013

The times when we didn't take pictures.



Remember Tallahassee, the best six years of our lives!
I was quite anxious the whole time!
You seemed happy, you said.
Well, I kept a calendar, counting the days when we'd get back to a normal life.
You're exaggerating!
Not exaggerating, ruminating on how something felt in the moment experienced.
You had the best smile ever, every day for six years. Everyone envied us.
I envied everyone else, those eighteen year olds with great figures, those who left after two years of graduate work, those whose lives were richer and more meaningful than ours.
All our friends envied you.
For what?
You were the perfect wife, mother, never complaining, always gracious...Wait,I have this picture...
I wanted more. No, that picture was taken way before Tallahassee and...
More what?
Our own place, for one thing. We have no pictures of those times. Do you know why?

(to be continued...




7 comments:

  1. interesting...there are gaps in our pictures as well...and a huge one where pictures went digital as well...my boys like to look back at our old photographs and hear our stories...

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  2. Heh, heh, heh - the perfect wife, mother... that's ME! Always quiet, dutifully compliant (somehow 'well-trained' seems to fit, too), never complaining, always gracious (and how many benevolent meanings that word has!) It feels as if you are hitting some of my nails right on the head, Rosaria.
    P.S. That photo is breathtakingly beautiful.

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  3. Now with digital cameras we take loads of pictures. But many years ago it was different. I wish I had taken pictures of my first car for example, or more pictures of my grandparents or my friends in France. I don’t have a picture of my first bicycle that I liked so much, or the first apartment where I lived in San Francisco, with my roommate there. She had told me “I don’t like Europeans, and above all French or Germans” but she let me move in, as long as I did not talk to her, she said. She worked nights – I worked days, so it was easy. I can see her in my mind, but I wish I had taken her picture. The pictures are in my memory but I cannot place them on a post….

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  4. As I am going through thousands of photographs at the moment, you post has a special resonance with me! I am often struck by the photos I didn't take -- even now with the digital age making it easier to take thousands of pictures I find there are times when for one reason or another I don't take a picture of it. Sometimes I just forget -- or is it more than that?

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  5. I have major gaps without photos and I pretty much know those reasons. They're never because things were so good at the time...

    This is an intriguing post.

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  6. these are unwritten (as of yet) stories which lend hope, intrigue and complexity. there is no one photograph, rosaria, is there, as there are a myriad of interpretations.

    i'm curious to see where this goes:)

    xo
    erin

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  7. I can't wait to read more. No photos of those times... I also think of those times of which I have no photos.

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