Pictures of Life and Everything

I know the feeling of desperately wanting to take a picture. Pictures to tell a story, pictures to save a moment in time, pictures to show how I see the world.

My dad, when I was young, loved to take pictures of me, of my mom, of my siblings. He even put me in one of his commercials, for a playpen. Then when I was about ten, he stopped. Was film too expensive? Did it annoy my mom? Did his muse leave? I don’t know. Maybe his muse came to me. I love taking pictures.

I have a memory of watching film being developed. This memory might actually be of a television show or documentary. Dipping paper in chemicals, moving it to another chemical tray, and one more, each time more of the picture would emerge. Then wait and the page was filled, the memory there for all to see. Magic.

Saving holidays, birthdays, vacations, daily life. One snapshot in time brings back so many memories. For instance, the picture of my birthday party, where I am blowing out candles on a cake. We are having so much fun, laughing, anticipating eating cake. But what isn’t shown is that this is the fourth take, we are laughing because my dad made us set this scene up over and over until he got just the right shot. There is a picture of me standing on a bridge across the San Antonio River (many years later I would take a picture of my kids on that bridge), I don’t know if because the sun was so bright or if I moved or my dad did, but I look like a ghost standing there surrounded by sunlight. I liked to make up stories about that little girl ghost. Maybe my dad did too because he is the one who kept that photo.

My dad loved to set up takes so they would be just so. He rarely just took a picture. I am the exact opposite. I wait for a moment to happen and then snap. I love action shots, especially of my kids playing. Soccer or Monopoly; climbing trees or reading a book. I always kept my camera at the ready. A good bit of the time they didn’t even know I had taken a picture until we picked up the prints at the store. Now with my grandchildren and a cell phone it is even easier to capture them.

Pictures are memories, moments in time, moments that may never come again except in our minds. The memories demand sharing to complete the process of the moment. I love seeing my family sitting snuggled on the couch looking at an album. They are saying remember this. And then that happened. Yes, I often take a picture.

—Melissa Tolliver

In the Trees at Evening

“and you too have come / into the world to do this, / to go easy, 

to be filled with light / and to shine.” 

from “When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver

In the Trees at Evening

You too have come

into this world to touch

the hands of someone you love,

to look into the leaves

and be glad.

And, yes, there is pain,

pain so bright it is almost fire.

It burns into light.

Sometimes when all around us

is shards of glass,

broken walls, 

it is hard to remember

that this world is our home,

that hands still touch.

The sky at evening 

fills with a rose

that comes from burning,

a tender flush

that comes through sorrow

to reach us.

Someone says, isn’t it your duty

to be sad, to lament

all that is lost,

to rise up in anger?

Perhaps that is the work of the day

but now evening has come

to find its way through the branches,

and I look up

and am glad of the light.

—Sarah Webb

OH! TO BE THAT GRANDPARENT HEARING THAT UNIQUE LOVED ONE’S EQUIVALENT TO LAUGHTER!

Prompt: “Today my blind and deaf granddaughter put her hand on the top of my head as I was eating an apple, and she laughed.”

OH! TO BE THAT GRANDPARENT HEARING THAT UNIQUE LOVED ONE’S EQUIVALENT TO LAUGHTER!

So happy to hear this prompt because I find I tend to waddle in the dour, sour, and sad. Yesterday after my doctor’s visit, I went to Central Perk Café and happened to sit next to two women signing in American Sign Language. One was an earnest Black woman, head in turban, and her facial expressions where the same as you would expect in any animated 20- or 30-something person – very intense gesticulations, the pointing-finger wagging the rest of the upper body for extra effect. In fact, I think the queer community has appropriated this animated style of gesticulation under the rubric of “extra.” There was an occasional sound uttered, but just watching these women talk to each other was so mesmerizing, I found myself rudely staring. They stared back at me; I then caught myself and I had to slowly spell out in my limited ASL “Oh, I’m sorry.” 

Anyway, I had been to my doctor’s, was fasting, had my blood drawn, and made my way to the cafe un-caffeinated, hungry, maybe even hangry, when I sat down at the table next to these two women. The cafe is near the Texas School for the Deaf and there’s a large active vocal deaf community here in Austin.  Also a large blind/visually-impaired community – TX School for the Blind. And also nearby, a scaled down state hospital for the mentally ill. 

The disabled community separated itself from the mentally ill a long time ago for a variety of reasons: political, societal, stigma, funding streams, etc. But people overcoming whatever their disability is the single most continuous inspiring wonder to me in the world ever since I can remember remembering. I tear-up; my voice catches with emotion; I find I can go on.

My last boss at the hospital is a well-respected psychologist, wheelchair-bound, born with only mere stubs for legs, married, and bore a healthy child. And I understand that it took a village, meaning she needed and received a ton of help. Working with her has been one of the high points of my career. She has since moved on and I miss her. The occupational nurse at work who gives us our flu and COVID shots is deaf, can read lips pretty good – but imagine this when we were masked for three years.  She couldn’t read our lips. I always booked my time with her when she wasn’t busy so I could slowly letter-by-letter sign her my questions and answers. Sometimes we would default to old-school paper and pen. But at least I tried.  I think the last time with this last shot I signed “Love you” instead of “Thank you.” I left, awkwardly.

My daughter was severely speech delayed. We had to learn simple sign language for a 4-year-old in three-times-per-week speech therapy so that she could catch up for preschool. She was the happiest kid in the group, always giggling and taking the lead in their group activities that also served to coax them to speak. I can still hear her laughter when it matured from giggles to a child’s belly-laugh for the first time for her at age five.

Recently there was a short film nominated for an Oscar about a troubled teen meeting a deaf, mute, and blind man at a bus stop, played by an actor who really was deaf and blind, and in the scene was writing out he was lost. The story was based on fact and was transformative for the teen. He learned that empathy softens, just a bit, a 17-year-old’s antipathy for the world. There’s a funny Netflix comedy about the trials and tribulations of a cute gay guy with cerebral palsy. And remember the son on “Breaking Bad”?  So much visibility for the disabled as actors nowadays - surely for the good.  

But I do not romanticize their pain and suffering. I stopped saying long ago, “There but by the grace of God go I.” That’s still ‘othering,’ simply put. NO! Pain in this life is unavoidable. We all share in its suffering. And just like people overcoming their disabilities, the manner in which we suffer is a matter of choice. 

—Todd Cornett