Phones and Photographs
Recently, I found two cameras in my closet, the throw-away black and yellow ones that contain an old fashioned role of film. In a world of instant gratification where we take high resolution digital photos with our phones, it has been a long time since I've taken film to the store to be developed.
As a child of the 70's and 80's, the idea of a camera that could be used once and thrown away was pretty spectacular, let alone, a camera inside of a phone attached to nothing but a signal in the sky. With cell phones, high resolution picture taking is always available at my fingertips. I remember telephones with a dial that had to be turned, not touched. They were attached to curly cords that could be stretched through the entire house but that tangled after months of consistent tweenager use. I imagined what it would be like to pull out a phone while walking down the street rather than searching for a payphone and hoping I had a quarter. Conversations on such phones were limited to 3 minutes. At 2 minutes, a friendly recorded voice would break in to say, "One more minute. Please deposit twenty five cents." Back then, a letter required an envelope, a stamp and several days to arrive. And we waited patiently; that was the world in which we lived.
After finding the cameras, one would think that I took them directly to the photo center at the local Walgreens and had them developed with the one hour photo option. I admit that I was incredibly curious to the contents of the camera, yet I procrastinated. I was busy with a three-year-old, a husband, work, dinner, dishes, laundry, holidays, snow days, doctor appointments, family visits--living life. When I finally arrived at the photo center, I was surprised to learn that they no longer developed film but they would have to send the cameras to a third party. It would take 10 days!
Photographs are an amazing thing. They capture a second in time that would otherwise only be saved in a memory and there is question as to how accurate a memory is. My memories appear in motion picture format, as if I am outside of my body and simply a third party observer. The colors may be vivid and they often jump from scene to scene in a disjointed jumble that makes sense only in the way a dream sequence does. Memory corrects the flaws that a photograph exploits.
I finally picked up the pictures yesterday. I could barely wait to open the envelopes, but as if it were a sacred occasion, I rushed from the store to the privacy of my car before unwrapping what seemed like a prized gift. As I peaked into the envelope, the first photo smiled back at me from a hospital room. There were machines and cords and a face that I barely recognized. It was a face I had tried desperately to retrieve from a tangled portion of my mind on multiple occasions, but failed. The smile was that of my son's birth mother (his tummy mom, as we call her), hours before he would be born.
I have rewound that night in my mind over and over again and thought the photos had been lost forever. As if it were Christmas morning, the pictures appeared in truth instead of memory. Moments before that photo was taken, I had sat on the very bed in which she was lying, combing her hair and putting on makeup as if we were sisters or friends who had known each other for years and years. It was almost a sacred moment and I remember the overwhelming feeling of love for her that washed over me. I wished we could be friends, family, forever. And in the same moment, it was as if there was no such thing as time, only eternity and infinity and forever.
Adoption is a funny thing -- a beautiful, funny thing. In some ways, it seems so unnatural that one woman would sacrifice the child she created and nurtured so unselfishly, to another woman--almost a stranger--whose womb was closed and broken but who so desperately wanted to bless and nurture a child. It requires a charitable wisdom, not toward the woman with the broken womb, but to the cherished child to whom she knows she cannot give what he needs. There would have been no absence of love or affection, only an utter and complete absence of stability.
The next photo was that of our birth mother's mother. It was she who reminded me that once our son was born, our sisterhood would only commence through pictures and letters. For the sake of everyone, for the healing of the gaping wound that would be left in her heart, that is how it would be. As I studied the eyes of the woman in the photo, I saw the eyes of my son.
Another picture was of a huge bag of peanut M&M's. This was a memory I had forgotten, as if it were part of the movie that included product placement for advertisement. When we had first arrived at the hospital, she told us she had a craving for peanut M&M's. I had never had a baby, but I had been present for the birth of a child previously and I had a full understanding (as much as is possible from a woman with a broken womb) of what was about to take place. If she needed peanut M&M's, she would have them, along with a small bottle of castor oil.
Castor oil and M&M's, you ask? My mother believed that castor oil would cause labor to happen more quickly. She and her neighbor (who was also expecting) had shared a bottle just before my brother was born to ensure a 1968 tax deduction. The photo of the M&M's, next to a picture of a cell phone, reminded me of the castor oil. The phone was her link to the boyfriend and birth father who repeatedly rejected her. The castor oil was the medicine to hopefully end the pain as quickly as possible. I guess the M&M's were the sugar to help the medicine go down. A spoonful, a bag full -- none of the medicine went down easily.
Several other photos reminded me of the phone call that I had received earlier in the day. There were several phone calls, actually. I had missed them all, as I was frantically painting a newly remodeled room in our house. Drywall dust was everywhere and the house was in no way ready for an infant to arrive. He wasn't due for another 3 weeks, and I had taken the day off to get things ready. When I finally picked up my phone, my husband was on the other line. "I"m on my way home. The baby's coming!" What? No! I'm not ready! I have paint all the way up my elbows and there is dust everywhere! I hopped in the shower for the quickest, get the paint off of me as fast as possible showers I have ever taken and then ran around the house from room to room, crying. My hair, in each of the photos, is tired and stringy. No kind hearted soul offered me a ponytail holder or a comb. As I looked at the photos, I was reminded that I was in a hurry and that curly hair on a humid day and when tired, looks much more unkempt than straight hair. The photos tattled on my memory; my hair was an unglamourous mess.
It was with the tangled mess of hair that I was first photographed with my son. He was lying in an isolet, screaming in the utter distress of a creature so recently tossed out of heaven into a cold and frightening world. With each cry, he practiced the art of breathing and learning to exhale before the next breath. I hadn't held him yet -- he didn't yet know he was mine. I was a stranger to him as I approached and tried to hold his tiny hand and he whaled. His birth grandmother approached him and cupped his little body in her hand and he was immediately calm. At that very moment, I felt like an imposter. The photo captured a memory I had played over and over again. 3 1/2 years later, my memory took print.
The other memory forever printed in my mind was the first time I held his little body in my arms. I was a different mother than the one who had carried him for so long. My heartbeat was different, my voice, my breath. But as I held the bottle to his lips, he devoured hungrily. The photo tells the rest of the story, how I held him as close to my body as I could with my mouth close to his ear, whispering. I remember singing to him a lullaby and he went to sleep.
There will be other photos--first steps, first days of school, baptism and birthdays, first dates and proms. Each of those I will share with his other mom -- the one who carried him so I could raise him to manhood. And someday, there may be another photo--one where he is looking into the eyes of a beautiful bride on their wedding day. At that time, I hope I will have raised a son to be the kind of man my own father was--a man who picked a woman of virtue, like my own mother. It is bittersweet to have him only for a moment, really His birth mother's moment was even more brief but no less profound. In all of the moments of joy that are caught in photos, and the moments of sorrow are only stored in flawed memories, all things lead to this -- love. Someday, love will mean letting go, but tonight he is still my little boy and I will read him a story, help him to say his prayers and maybe even sing him a lullaby.
As a child of the 70's and 80's, the idea of a camera that could be used once and thrown away was pretty spectacular, let alone, a camera inside of a phone attached to nothing but a signal in the sky. With cell phones, high resolution picture taking is always available at my fingertips. I remember telephones with a dial that had to be turned, not touched. They were attached to curly cords that could be stretched through the entire house but that tangled after months of consistent tweenager use. I imagined what it would be like to pull out a phone while walking down the street rather than searching for a payphone and hoping I had a quarter. Conversations on such phones were limited to 3 minutes. At 2 minutes, a friendly recorded voice would break in to say, "One more minute. Please deposit twenty five cents." Back then, a letter required an envelope, a stamp and several days to arrive. And we waited patiently; that was the world in which we lived.
After finding the cameras, one would think that I took them directly to the photo center at the local Walgreens and had them developed with the one hour photo option. I admit that I was incredibly curious to the contents of the camera, yet I procrastinated. I was busy with a three-year-old, a husband, work, dinner, dishes, laundry, holidays, snow days, doctor appointments, family visits--living life. When I finally arrived at the photo center, I was surprised to learn that they no longer developed film but they would have to send the cameras to a third party. It would take 10 days!
Photographs are an amazing thing. They capture a second in time that would otherwise only be saved in a memory and there is question as to how accurate a memory is. My memories appear in motion picture format, as if I am outside of my body and simply a third party observer. The colors may be vivid and they often jump from scene to scene in a disjointed jumble that makes sense only in the way a dream sequence does. Memory corrects the flaws that a photograph exploits.
I finally picked up the pictures yesterday. I could barely wait to open the envelopes, but as if it were a sacred occasion, I rushed from the store to the privacy of my car before unwrapping what seemed like a prized gift. As I peaked into the envelope, the first photo smiled back at me from a hospital room. There were machines and cords and a face that I barely recognized. It was a face I had tried desperately to retrieve from a tangled portion of my mind on multiple occasions, but failed. The smile was that of my son's birth mother (his tummy mom, as we call her), hours before he would be born.
I have rewound that night in my mind over and over again and thought the photos had been lost forever. As if it were Christmas morning, the pictures appeared in truth instead of memory. Moments before that photo was taken, I had sat on the very bed in which she was lying, combing her hair and putting on makeup as if we were sisters or friends who had known each other for years and years. It was almost a sacred moment and I remember the overwhelming feeling of love for her that washed over me. I wished we could be friends, family, forever. And in the same moment, it was as if there was no such thing as time, only eternity and infinity and forever.
Adoption is a funny thing -- a beautiful, funny thing. In some ways, it seems so unnatural that one woman would sacrifice the child she created and nurtured so unselfishly, to another woman--almost a stranger--whose womb was closed and broken but who so desperately wanted to bless and nurture a child. It requires a charitable wisdom, not toward the woman with the broken womb, but to the cherished child to whom she knows she cannot give what he needs. There would have been no absence of love or affection, only an utter and complete absence of stability.
The next photo was that of our birth mother's mother. It was she who reminded me that once our son was born, our sisterhood would only commence through pictures and letters. For the sake of everyone, for the healing of the gaping wound that would be left in her heart, that is how it would be. As I studied the eyes of the woman in the photo, I saw the eyes of my son.
Another picture was of a huge bag of peanut M&M's. This was a memory I had forgotten, as if it were part of the movie that included product placement for advertisement. When we had first arrived at the hospital, she told us she had a craving for peanut M&M's. I had never had a baby, but I had been present for the birth of a child previously and I had a full understanding (as much as is possible from a woman with a broken womb) of what was about to take place. If she needed peanut M&M's, she would have them, along with a small bottle of castor oil.
Castor oil and M&M's, you ask? My mother believed that castor oil would cause labor to happen more quickly. She and her neighbor (who was also expecting) had shared a bottle just before my brother was born to ensure a 1968 tax deduction. The photo of the M&M's, next to a picture of a cell phone, reminded me of the castor oil. The phone was her link to the boyfriend and birth father who repeatedly rejected her. The castor oil was the medicine to hopefully end the pain as quickly as possible. I guess the M&M's were the sugar to help the medicine go down. A spoonful, a bag full -- none of the medicine went down easily.
Several other photos reminded me of the phone call that I had received earlier in the day. There were several phone calls, actually. I had missed them all, as I was frantically painting a newly remodeled room in our house. Drywall dust was everywhere and the house was in no way ready for an infant to arrive. He wasn't due for another 3 weeks, and I had taken the day off to get things ready. When I finally picked up my phone, my husband was on the other line. "I"m on my way home. The baby's coming!" What? No! I'm not ready! I have paint all the way up my elbows and there is dust everywhere! I hopped in the shower for the quickest, get the paint off of me as fast as possible showers I have ever taken and then ran around the house from room to room, crying. My hair, in each of the photos, is tired and stringy. No kind hearted soul offered me a ponytail holder or a comb. As I looked at the photos, I was reminded that I was in a hurry and that curly hair on a humid day and when tired, looks much more unkempt than straight hair. The photos tattled on my memory; my hair was an unglamourous mess.
It was with the tangled mess of hair that I was first photographed with my son. He was lying in an isolet, screaming in the utter distress of a creature so recently tossed out of heaven into a cold and frightening world. With each cry, he practiced the art of breathing and learning to exhale before the next breath. I hadn't held him yet -- he didn't yet know he was mine. I was a stranger to him as I approached and tried to hold his tiny hand and he whaled. His birth grandmother approached him and cupped his little body in her hand and he was immediately calm. At that very moment, I felt like an imposter. The photo captured a memory I had played over and over again. 3 1/2 years later, my memory took print.
The other memory forever printed in my mind was the first time I held his little body in my arms. I was a different mother than the one who had carried him for so long. My heartbeat was different, my voice, my breath. But as I held the bottle to his lips, he devoured hungrily. The photo tells the rest of the story, how I held him as close to my body as I could with my mouth close to his ear, whispering. I remember singing to him a lullaby and he went to sleep.
There will be other photos--first steps, first days of school, baptism and birthdays, first dates and proms. Each of those I will share with his other mom -- the one who carried him so I could raise him to manhood. And someday, there may be another photo--one where he is looking into the eyes of a beautiful bride on their wedding day. At that time, I hope I will have raised a son to be the kind of man my own father was--a man who picked a woman of virtue, like my own mother. It is bittersweet to have him only for a moment, really His birth mother's moment was even more brief but no less profound. In all of the moments of joy that are caught in photos, and the moments of sorrow are only stored in flawed memories, all things lead to this -- love. Someday, love will mean letting go, but tonight he is still my little boy and I will read him a story, help him to say his prayers and maybe even sing him a lullaby.
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