paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- picnic places, family photos and chigger bites I just finished putting nail polish on my chigger bites. Summer in the hot, grassy states. Yesterday, Quinn and I took her son and daughter-in-law to the arboretum and I took pictures of them. I am working on taking pictures of people that are not the posed sort of �line-em-up� pictures that are popular with families. Quinn once told me that when she was a child, it would take an entire year to get through a roll of film. My family is incredibly vain, so they only take pictures if everyone is dressed nicely. But back in the day, I do believe it is called, pictures were taken. Being the first grandchild on both sides of the family, there were many pictures of me as a baby and a young child. My mother says there is an entire brown cardboard box of pictures of our family from 1968-1973. Or there was. These were destroyed by my father after my mother�s big exit, with me in tote. I have often wanted to see them, because photographs are proof. And when analyzed, they tell the real story. The story behind that midwestern politeness. First, I can�t believe that I slept in a drawer the first year of my life when we lived in New Jersey. Or that we lived in New Jersey at all�. My mother tie-dyed my diapers and baby t-shirts, too, which does not surprise me. She has a real flair for ornamentation. I would like a glimpse of the three of us living in the Old Stanley in Arizona without a bathroom, in a one-room, dusty apartment. My well-groomed, proper mother among a bunch of hippies. But it gets better. Most especially, I want that visual proof of the trailer we lived in without electricity or plumbing in the middle of horse pasture. I can vaguely remember waking up to a horse licking me. If there is one thing worse than heat and chiggers, it is horse breath in the morning. To see Mother in her Saab, living in Neatside, you would never believe that we did not have our own bathroom until I was 3. And now, she has taken the colonial look a little far, especially in the Wedgewood room, covered with lots of yellow urns and various botanicals. She has coordinated the paper with tight checks and large floral fabric. I hope it makes people dizzy and have succeeded at never sleeping in the Wedgewood room. Did I mention that all of her Wedgewood is housed in the Wedgewood room, or would that be too obvious? So, yeah, I have this fascination with family photographs stemming from a lack of them in my life. And back to where I was, before I digressed. The arboretum had absolutely changed since Quinn and I were last there. It was once a wild place with large, magical sycamores. There is a place with three sycamores in a circle that we believe is magical, but we couldn�t find it. We used to, when we were first getting to know each other, stand in the middle of the sycamores and look up at them ushering our nervous yet excited little spirits skyward. And the perfect dappled light�. Today we are both mourning this place that got a paved sidewalk all around it and big vans of families show up. No more of those picnics with a blanket sinking down in the grass under a tree, some wine, a few kisses, a few more kisses. It was one of the last places to be able to just spontaneously have a kiss in the big beautiful outdoors, unobserved. Gone is my photographic fantasy of taking a picture of Quinn glowing in the moonlight down on the bank of the river. Now, I have to get ready for a teleconference I said I would lead tomorrow. Consultant dollars seem so impressive, until it is Sunday night and I am working in one more thing instead of writing about my mother preparing for her lesbian-couple visitors at the end of the week. They will stay in the Wedgewood room�� tune in tomorrow, as they say. 10:33 p.m. - 2002-06-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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