Today I'm joining Claire Burge and other High Calling photographers (and poets) in a "history" photo play. Claire's challenge to us was to find five images - one for each answer to five questions about our history. She also encouraged us to use symbols in our images to represent those memories.
I began working on the challenge this morning by writing down the questions and making notes as I recalled the events in my past the questions evoked and the photos that might reflect those memories.
The first four photos were taken this summer, the fifth photo in 2008 - with my first digital camera - an old Kodak.
Question 1: Who made up your DNA?
This is the photo I wanted to submit. It's certainly a picture of the people who literally contributed to my DNA, but it's a picture of a picture and I didn't think it would be a fair submission. As I made notes about who my parents were, I thought about my dad's love for the Florida Gators, crossword puzzles, and writing, and how much those loves of his became my own.
Both my mom and my dad were U.S. Navy veterans who served in WWII, and were unashamed of their love for our country. After my dad passed away and we moved my bedridden mother into our home, a few people from church dropped by on the 4th of July to serenade her with patriotic music. Tears welled up in my mother's eyes before trickling down the crevasses of her soft white cheeks. In her dementia, mother forgot many things, but never her love for her country - it was in her DNA that made up mine...
Question 2: Where do you come from?
This was the hardest question of all. There's too much to say about where I come from - even in the handful of towns within her borders I've called home. It's where I've lived my whole life - the land of sunshine, alligators, sugar-sand beaches, palm trees, citrus groves, Sand Mountain, Bok Tower, horse farms, water-skiing, grits, fish fries, rivers, springs, scuba diving, Friday night football, Gator Nation, hurricanes, mosquitoes, y'all, and being lured to sleep by the cicadas' tymbals...
Question 3: What object is precious to your past?
I had two answers to this question. My mother's wedding ring was the first thing I thought of, but I'm wearing it, and don't think that a photo of my gnarly hand would be all that attractive, so I concluded that my second answer, which is actually related to the ring, would be a better choice. When my parents returned from their honeymoon to their small apartment, mother found a white hand embroided tablecloth with a crocheted trim on her kitchen table. It was a wedding gift from her matron of honor, and though the details of that lovely handwork are not visible in the photo below, I know they are there - underneath the vase of flowers in mother's favorite color that were given to me on my birthday...
Question 4: What memory resonates most deeply?
From my earliest memory, I was crazy about kittens and pianos. While my parents lovingly provided me with more than enough kittens, a piano was beyond their means until I was a teenager. I remember hoping every Christmas and every birthday that a piano would somehow appear in our living room. As an adult, I now know how painful that must have been for my parents to want to give me something they simply could not afford. I wrote breifly about my love for the piano and my Aunt Dot a couple of weeks ago. I have many not-so-good memories that resonate deeply, but this is a good one...
Question 5: What moment in history marks your childhood?
There are two moments in history that came to mind as I considered this question. Hurricane Donna is the first. I was ten years old. Communication was not what we have today, and we made our way through hurricanes with much less preparation and knowledge than we do today. On Donna's second trip across our state, she came right over our house. I remember walking outside in the storm's center and rushing back in as we heard the eyewall approach. I remember my parents trying to tie the window casings down before they blew out, the pool overflowing and flooding our Florida room, and the fear that I was going to die. Donna was one of the msot costly storms in U.S. history, and because of the devastation and high mortality, the name "Donna" was retired and will never again be used for an Atlantic hurricane.
The second moment in history that marked my childhood was one with much greater global significance. Three years after Hurricane Donna twisted through my central Florida community, I was leaving school for the day on November 22, 1963, and as I gathered with my classmates on the lawn outside Dennison Junior High School, the news of President John F. Kennedy's assassination traveled from one person to the next. Many of us cried as we found seats on our school buses for home.
Emily's maturity and keen interest in politics have opened many doors for her that have included the opportunity to meet those holding high political offices and an exposure to the secret service, as a result. At one event, we watched the secret service with their arms around President Bush's waist as they moved him along a line of greeters. The photo below, with one of the president's planes in the distance and a deputy and one of dozens (if not hundreds) of secret service agents at another event, represents that real and constant threat to the security of those in office...
Emily greeting Vice President Cheney the day the above photo was taken.
How would you answer one of the questions? I'd love for you to leave your answer in a comment below, or let me know if you participated in this photo play.
