My parents are awesome

I'm planning a post elsewhere about this site, My Parents Were Awesome, a Tumblr joint consisting solely of photos submitted of parents, presumably by their children. There is a call for stories on the site as well so I'm not sure what the plans are to expand it in text, and I haven't watched the videos that would probably tell me more, given my current weird allergy to online video.

I spent part of the night scanning some old photos, with the aim of submitting something of my own parents. I can't find the ones I really want to use of them alone but I've been loving this one of them with me on my Christening day.

I love old snapshots with a deep and abiding love. I love their haphazardness, their scratches, their odd, dated borders and their bottomless pit of history. My mother's mother is probably responsible for my intense love of photography, particularly of people and relationships. She had stacks of photo albums in and on her coffee tables, and I looked at them almost every time I went to her house, which was often. When my father's mother died I took the big picture books and her wedding album because besides the ring she gave me, a few Boston Terrier figurines, the pictures were all I cared about. I had everything else I needed in my head.

My project for the forseeable future is turning our family photos digital, and I think I started today. 

I like this picture specifically because it's really the first version of our family - the ten years before my sister was born - writ large. My parents were so young, 21 and 23, but they're in this shot who they have always been to me. Plus I'm always very interested in what babies might be thinking, and I'm sure that even though I was nine months old here, I wasn't talking yet so who knew? 

Yet. Oh just you wait, you poor people.

Given the post I wrote just the other day, I thought this was an interesting image to bring up just now, of the day they brought me into the church. You can be as angry as I am about what I know now that I didn't know then, which is everything, but things don't start out political.

Hence the Flickr caption:

"Someday, Mother and Father, I will write a rageful blog post about this organization while enjoying a glass of nice Spanish red. Apologies in advance."

I kind of like the idea that I look like I'm pre-drafting it in my head, like I just wasn't so sure about all of this. Oh yeah, just hanging out here in a dress, waiting on my next meal. What's up?

And those pants, Daddy. Those pants.

We're not usually in church anymore.

Comments

[Deb on the Rocks]

I love both of these photos, and getting to see both of them together,like time travel. And look at your little shoes!

That site is very loving and is so spare and intimate. Almost too non-cynical for the Internet. I have an attraction to the hippie parents and have no idea why.

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