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Photos by NAE @pomegranatetrail ©2011
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The time has come to dismantle my mother's photo albums.
It is a very hard job.
Many of the people in these books have already passed on. I miss them.
My mother was the last of her generation in our family. She had everybody's stuff.
Now my sister and I have everybody's stuff.
I have so many...so very many conversations with myself (and my sister) about:
What we are supposed to do with all of this "stuff"?
My mom created many photo albums over the years.
But, this grouping of bumpy, textured, woven ones are the hardest to undo.
They hold my whole childhood.
They hold the little girl part of me that still exists, deeply ingrained in my heart.
There are so many family photos, collected over years of life experiences.
There's so much family history here.
At first I did not think I would be able to take these books apart, as I've known them most of my life. They speak volumes about my mother. Their super organized, chronological order format, even down to the blending of two families...the little white paper labeling done in my mother's never-changing handwriting...their smell, my mother's smell that graces everything once belonging to her.
Taking them apart is loosing another piece of my mom.
It's loosing her once again and that is sad.
I look for the lessons. I embrace family traditions.
I celebrate joyous moments again.
I marvel at who my mother was...at who each one of us has been.
Somehow, this job feels appropriate for this season of change.
I feel changes coming.
I feel unsettled...disequilibrium.
I fit this job in where time and emotions allow.
