Grandmothers and photography.
The first thing I know about being a grandmother is that I can buy nice cameras in my older age which makes all of the difference. I have talked with other grandmothers who say the same things I do and feel the same way about the years when their children were growing up. Cameras for ordinary people were primitive in most ways, film was expensive as was developing and we were all young families on budgets.
I ran across these winter photographs of Afton today and wanted her to see them. If we were talking about them I would say to her “See, how I watched you. See how I loved you. See how much I wanted to remember you.”
Wouldn’t I love to look back at Afton’s mother playing in this way? Wouldn’t I love to see the photographs of them side-by-side?
Back then, I would have asked Afton’s mother to stand still and smile at me for that was what we did, while playing in the snow would have been a distraction and an afterthought. I can almost hear myself telling her to hold still and quit goofing around. It took time for me to learn a new way and understand that the snowball fight was more important than a perfectly focused face.
We all have had to teach ourselves to take photographs in a different way.
Today we know immediately what we have captured and what we have missed.
After she romped in the snow we had hot chocolate and after I asked, which I did only once, she made it clear that she was going back outside and didn’t want her coat.
I remember.
MERRY CHRISTMAS from Afton in the year 2013.
