On Remembering What Is Real
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One
I keep photographs of my boys all around our house.
I have one of me and Noah, my youngest, on my desk. He was about nine months old at the time and I was holding him across my body as if I was about to nurse him. My dad took the picture without me knowing and he captured a moment I love remembering. My face was tilted down, smiling at Noah as he clutched my gold chain with his chubby fingers. He wore a teal jumper and muted rainbow-print bib and the sunlight filtered through the trees, casting bright patches on our skin and all around us.
I have another photograph in my closet, next to my jewelry tray. It captures all three of my sons together with wide smiles in black and white. My oldest two, ages eight and six at the time, were still smitten with Noah, who had just turned one year. He was not yet at the stage of taking and breaking Legos, ripping book pages, or rifling through nightstand drawers. Back then, Alex and Connor didn’t miss an opportunity to snuggle him. They embraced him as their baby brother and often spoke of how special he was—sometimes with tears in their eyes.
The hallway to our bedroom is home to three large picture frames. One still contains the sample image of a stranger grinning at us. It will (soon) be replaced with a newborn photograph of Noah, but we have yet to cut the matting to the proper size. The other two frames hold pictures of Alex and Connor as newborns. I vividly remember the day their photographs were taken, one at home and one in the hospital. They barely resemble the little babies they were and yet, when Connor is asleep and Alex furrows his brow in a certain way, there they are.
Two
My dad hardly goes anywhere without his camera. Growing up, I remember him taking pictures of everything my brother and sister and I did. He was even diligent to photograph our animals. When I began playing sports, he couldn’t bear to stay on the sidelines. He had to be close to the action—close to me. Whether I had a bloody nose or I was bent over trying to catch my breath after a race, he was there to capture the moment. As a teenager, this was beyond embarrassing at times, but I knew he couldn’t be separated from his camera—it had become a part of him. Taking pictures was his way of joining me in my experiences. He was able to celebrate me and pursue his love of photography at the same time.
These days, he sits on the bleachers and sidelines with me while my boys participate in sports. He has a better camera now and with digital film, he is more selective about which images he shares, but his enthusiasm remains the same. When he sends me his favorite pictures, there are always at least a few of me cheering on my boys, talking to a friend, or trying to keep Noah entertained. He continues to show me that even moments on the sidelines are worth remembering and, he is still proud of me.
Three
When Noah was born, we didn’t hire a photographer. It’s not that we didn’t want to, but we were preparing to sell our home and move within a tight deadline and the timing felt impossible. I was determined to remember my baby as he was, so I took what I had learned from watching photographers over the years, including my dad, and set up a newborn photo shoot in our son’s east-facing bedroom. I opened all the windows, draped a textured baby blanket over a pillow, and began the dance. I am happy to say, I captured our little Noah in all his wrinkled baby sweetness just right. I continued this practice each month until we moved into our new home, doing my best to remember the wooden month markers somewhere in view. It wasn’t always easy, but it was a joy to filter through the images later on.
One year later, we hired a professional photographer to come to our new home. We had mostly settled in and felt an urgency to capture our family as we were. Our photographer took countless pictures of our whole family, indoors and outdoors, including individuals and group shots of our boys. Finally, she urged my husband and I to sit together in front of the camera. What she didn’t know was how much we needed to see each other as a couple—like we were before parenthood began to unravel us. Like we were when love was easy.
These are the pictures I had longed for. She froze our family in time and gave us priceless art to decorate our bare walls. The kind of art that inspires us to love and appreciate each other even [especially] on the hard days.
Four
“Mom, let me take it.” Alex, my oldest, asks while I attempt some candid shots of my boys sitting on the couch.
It’s rare to find a moment when they are all still in one place, so I keep a camera on the bookshelves in our great room, ready when I need it.
Alex is starting to recognize the magic of still images and I want to give him the opportunity to play and experiment in this way.
A few years ago, my dad surprised each of his grandchildren, apart from baby Noah, with a Polaroid-style camera. I now understand that handing a child a camera with film in it is not unlike handing a child a bag of candy and telling them to savor it. My boys took pictures of everything. Everything. Bean bag chairs, trees through the window, themselves, each other, and our red Lab. It took significant restraint not to knit pick their choice of inspiration. Their enthusiasm waned once the film ran out, but I noticed how quickly they found joy in capturing their worlds through pictures.
One of our favorite things to do when we feel nostalgic, is to watch the For You slide shows in the Photos app on my iPhone. Nothing brings more smiles and oohs and aahs than sitting together and reminiscing about their earlier years—their facial expressions, past Halloween costumes, Duplo and Lego creations, etc. And nothing alters my perspective on the present day more rapidly than seeing how much they have changed from month-to-month, year-to-year.
Five
If you were to search my camera roll for pictures of just my husband and I, you would be looking for a while. We are not a “selfie couple.” Not anymore. Aside from our annual family photo session, or a picture my dad snaps of us during a family gathering, you would be lucky to find any others. You would find plenty of him or I with our boys, but not together.
I do not believe that happy selfies are an indicator of a happy marriage, but sometimes I wonder why we no longer feel the desire to document our relationship. Maybe we are too consumed by the busyness of raising young children. Maybe we have let our relationship take a backseat to everything that feels more urgent. Maybe we have lost track of who we are apart from our children.
We have walked through many difficult seasons in our marriage. But when our relationship feels good, even for a moment, I want to remember it. Because on the days when we feel more like roommates than husband and wife, I need proof of the good memories we have shared, the love that brought us together. Sometimes the reminder I need is smiling back at me through a happy family photograph or an old selfie we took just for the fun of it.
Six
I recently lost my grandmother, who was also my last remaining grandparent. While grieving her presence and preparing for her memorial, I rummaged through old photographs from my childhood. I found pictures of her holding me as a baby. Pictures of her smiling, with eight of her twelve great-grandchildren, sandwiched together on her infamous white couch. I found pictures of my late brother, my sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors, and friends—all gathered around her table. What a gift it was to revisit these memories with such clarity. What a gift to have something to hold, to remind me that what we had was real.
After her memorial, her close family members gathered at her home where we found dozens of framed photographs of the people she cherished. Among them, I found a framed picture of my husband and I on our wedding day and several others of our boys. I imagined her sitting in her living room with a cup of hot tea and a thick slice of warm zucchini bread, smiling at each of our faces. These pictures helped to hold us together, even as we remained hundreds of miles apart.
What could be more real than that?
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*My Dad and I at my son’s soccer game. Photo credit: Alex Case, age 10.
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Enjoyed these vignette and the way you formatted the piece! I especially loved the part about your dad continuing to take photos of you on the sidelines 🥹 what a precious gift.
Beautiful!