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Yearly Archives: 2012This isn’t our residence but this is where we reside. This is the incongruence we call home for now. A place of wild adventure and houses made of ticky tacky. Behind tall fences and rough around the edges. It scares me to put all our story down in pictures. But it scares me more to forget this time, full of sand and sea as we tread rough paths to the water and back and forth again . . .
10-13-12 . 24-70mm . sunset walk with my mom
I grew up in a college town but I didn’t go to college there. When you have grown up somewhere, made mistakes and known and been known for all your young life, the town just shrinks right down, way too small for growing or breathing anymore. So off I went to the “big” city an hour away. There wasn’t a soul I knew there and I don’t even remember how I met her – Sandy, part native American, tall and soft and huggable but fierce when defending someone or something she loved. She braided her hair into pigtails and you always knew she was feeling good when Princess Leah buns were seen atop her head. She was never without her steel toe Dr Martin boots because she was always constructing new sculptures and asking my scrawny self to help her move them, then chiding me for my lack of girth and muscle. We moved into a brick building downtown, refurbished into trendy apartments and we drank wine together. Lots of wine. The rent was too steep though and my parents were footing the bill so I found a new place. A house full of artists. The avant guard of our inconsequential school. A love triangle had gone awry so boys were being expelled from the rickety old house and myself and another girl moved in. A girl that was everything I wasn’t, blond curls piled on her sweet head. She had whisked right in from another era in gingham and calico dresses. We lived together, sink stacked high with dishes, furnished with vintage treasures, vegetarian meals shared in the breakfast nook, swing dancing in our long living room, beer on crooked front steps and I was never really happy there. Never happy, never at peace and drifting farther away from a God I knew was real. Then my boy said he didn’t love me, didn’t want to do this anymore and I laid in bed wondering where I was and how I got there and what to do next and how could I ever get somewhere I was supposed to be. The room swam and I didn’t even want to go to shows with them. Low didn’t sooth my soul anymore and roommates drove off to Chicago and Bedhead without me. I road my bike to his house, stinking of desperation and rolled right into a tent revival. I sat in the back row, the only white face in an unfamiliar crowd, staring at a Bible on the seat next to me. Wondering if the God in there could ever take me back, wondering if His love was real enough to win me back. Tall dark man in a robe with a voice like rumbling water prayed for me and I felt something real. Amidst the craziness and ladies dancing outside a street corner church, I felt my creator. Long story, a friend with dreads and more ladies in church hats dancing in the aisles… and I knew I would follow God, knew what I always had, Jesus, Savior. I wish I had been strong enough to share the love with them, but I ran. Ran out of that half of an old house in the cool neighborhood, full of sex and despair. I ran to who knows where and ended up living with a gospel college. While the girls sang Halleluahs and straightened their tight curls I sat outside in the trees and read of Him. I was never one of them but they tolerated me, an odd curiosity. One mother took me in, offered me a job helping children. In a school looking like a castle, where I would meet my husband, dance with him in an old gym in front of young eyes that couldn’t see us. And I agreed to move into a two bedroom with her blind daughter, help take care of her till we were all worn out and it was time to take a break and move on . . . When the newness of His love wore off, the honeymoon as they say. I saw that the ladies dancing and the preacher shouting had just as many rules shutting them down as the quiet pews I had turned away from. If you didn’t praise loud enough, maybe you weren’t really heaven bound. The Blind School was closing for summer break and I needed a job to tide me over. Kneading bread for the local bakery was long and hot and I wanted to run free and most of all I wanted to a tribe to share the summer with. So I went to work at a church camp. Eighty acres in the country, brothers and sisters in Christ, living in a farmhouses and cabins. Telling children stories of old, singing silly songs and learning redemption from each other. Gathering round a tiny table to share meals, I learned grace. Running through woods. splashing into ponds, climbing rocks and being bound so tight together, I fell deeper into a heavenly love. Worshipping together, hearts laid bare, voices raised round campfires and flopped in circles on the floor, I felt the true mystery of ages. Capture the flag night after night, dashing through dark fields, learning every crazy character that we were sharing those magic months with, we were the body of Christ. I slept in a bed by the window, morning breeze wafting in, second floor of a creaky farmhouse, sharing the room with her. A musician and teacher whose heart is kind and tuned to truth. When the summer was over she offered me an air mattress on her floor. An oasis, a room and a closet to share. I grew to know and love my husband, had him put a ring on my finger while I was living with her. I finished college, learned about children and how I longed to have them and became a teacher while living there. I am thankful for her generosity and was so surprised and happy to share an evening with her on the beach here in California. It has been many years since we have seen each other. She has written a book, Mercy Rising and her husband has recorded a worship album. I have had three crazy kiddos, but we fell right back into the long talks and the silly jokes we shared. It felt like our memories at camp, kids running happy chaos around us as we cooked s’mores by the fire to the tune of guitars and Father Abraham. 10-4-12 . 28mm . sunset, last light
There is a very perfect ice cream truck that comes to our neighborhood. As soon as the kids hear the music they wait impatiently out front.
The sequence below was just the natural thing for Aaron to do with his ice cream cone. It ended with ice cream on the ground so of course we had to get more.
While we were baking in the sun, covered in sticky ice cream, Dad was inside jamming in front of a fan – smart man.
I hadn’t documented this summer ritual of ours because it always happens in really harsh light, but I’m glad I finally did. I’m happy I stopped worrying about the pictures looking great and just shot these images so we can hold onto the memories. 9-12 . 28mm . harsh sun
good weekends, nuff said
When I was a girl, we would walk from our little white rental house towards the university. Wandering by all the big brick houses surrounded by old trees and gardens and then looping back to our white box with a cement porch, nestled behind a park that seemed to my young eyes to go on for days. 606 Maxwell. I remember every tree that stood guard around it’s small yard. I can recall the number of steps to the back fence and the driveway we shared with Cecil and Grace. Them smelling sweet of cigars and hard candy. Her dark hair cut as short as his white buzz cut. Their front room filled with curios and smoke. We didn’t own it, but that house was home, more deeply imbedded in my heart than anything since. Rocking chair scratching across green indoor/outdoor carpet in the screened in porch that was our penthouse. I devoured apples, buried in a book, perched in a tree that also served as covered wagon, space ship, whatever the days’ stories required. In the cool evening light we would travel city blocks, past houses with castle turrets and balustrades. Brick cottages covered with ivy, and wooden lodges surrounded by tall fences. I would peek through the cracks and dream into yards veiled in secrecy. My brother and I would hop and run along tumble down stone walls beside my parents strolling cracked sidewalks. We sought out visual treasures and the best finds were flowered bushes spilling out overgrown into the road – for those were where the fairies lived. I have continued this quest as we have wandered about the country. Sprawling Southern estates and brick sea walls topped with old merchant homes in Wilmington. Everything covered over with azalea and crepe myrtle, pine trees standing sentry. The country’s history layed out block upon block, brownstones and homes that date to our founding days in the Nation’s Capitol. We walked and walked that city. In New York we rode the subway to slip into galleries hidden uptown, wondering of all the stories hidden behind curtained windows stacked upon each other. Nomads we are now, never quite making home. Yet I memorize the scenery and own the landmarks. A few months ago we almost made a home in the way tradition dictates. Buy a house, settle down. We still dream of a plot of land, our own space to pile up memories, holidays upon holidays in the same spot. Fireplaces, kitchen counters, and porch swings with history. But in the months since we let that dream slide we have found ourselves moving into new visions. We are “hopeless wanderers” and long to pace this globe, collecting all the bits of home that we can find. I don’t know what’s right, what to do. I want my children to have somewhere to come back to. But unlike when I was a little girl I understand now that the mystery’s thrill evaporates when you stop peeking through the cracks.When you purchase the dream, reality sets in and the story is never quite as perfect as the commercial. So for now we live a simple life, making home from goodnight songs and the same books read, Dad cooking breakfast and Mom building a wee garden where ever we may be. We claim cliffs and ocean waves as our own. This is the home my boys are soaking up, the saltwater and dusty sunlit trails etched deep in their hearts. We cook on a borrowed stove and have coffee and donuts at the same place every weekend. A community made of Tom the donut man and those we meet along the way. I strap my golden haired boy to the front of my bike and ride the only place we have ever really felt at home in all our journeys. A place we haven’t actually resided in, but know the alley ways, coffee shops and characters, know them deep in our souls and call them our own. Above all we are finding it necessary to keep our hearts aflame and search for the path we must tread. I don’t yet know what that means . . . but we are searching for treasures in the dark of a world that does not know our name. A world fraught with danger and so wide and open it cannot be contained. A world we travel only for a short time, meant to teach us many things – On our way to a bright and glorious, lasting home. Our foolish hearts are so prone to wander from light into all that will diminish, confuse and confine. I’m beginning to be convinced that at least for us, if our feet do not wander this soil a bit we fall into well worn paths of darkness, well disguised as they may be. At least for now, my family grows healthy by pitching tents instead of building temples. There have been stops along the way where I have had to will myself to find bits of beauty I could offer thanks for. To try and love the sky I was under even as it rained down angry storms upon my face. But here I no longer feel I am drowning. Here I fall in love with every home that could be my own, every street, every beach, everything that could confirm that this is where I belong. And here I am seeing that I must try to simply love the sky, for that is free for all and will call us each home. “Don’t let your heart grow cold, I will call you by name, I will share your road But hold me fast, hold me fast, cause I’m a hopeless wanderer . . . and I will learn, learn to love the skies I’m under” -Mumford and Sons 9-22-12 . 28mm . mid morning soft sunlight and indoors |
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