Pictures of you, pictures of me
How strange it must be to watch yourself grow up in real time.
Growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s, looking at photographs was somewhat of a sacred ritual.
My maternal grandmother’s house was the place for our family holiday gatherings. Invariably at some point while all the aunts, uncles and cousins were there someone would get out the large photo albums that housed the family memories through the years.
The earliest pictures in the books were black and white, going as far back as when my grandmother was young. Then there was a transition to her kids — my mom and her five siblings — in various places here and abroad, the ever-changing scenery of life in a military family.
Eventually there were pictures of the grandchildren. I was the first of many, so a disproportionate number of the photos at the front of the book were of me.
We looked at these faithfully, passing them around with full bellies after dinner and dessert, with new additions from the most recent year. Maybe I looked at them occasionally when visiting my grandma’s house at different times, but that was about it.
At home, we had some photos as well. My memory tells me they were mostly still in the packets you would get from the shop that developed your film, a process that usually took a few days. Nobody had any idea if the pictures were any good until you got them back, but the shots were also more selective because most film rolls had 24 shots on them.
My parents divorced when I was around 10; after that, the pictures and the memories were split into two different piles. I have some of them now, in an envelope in a drawer, where they feel like cultural artifacts that are occasionally rediscovered.
All of this is said in service of illustrating one of the most interesting changes in my lifetime, a dramatic shift between Back in My Day (TM) and how our kids are growing up.
They see pictures of themselves on a constant basis (weekly? near-daily?) because almost everyone has a camera in their pockets or hands at all times and the results of our pictures are both instant and unlimited. Take 10. Take 20. Take 100.
(As I wrote that last sentence, almost on cue, our 5-year-old asked me to take a picture of the mosquito bite on the back of his neck so he could see it).
Some photos in my phone camera roll serve a practical purpose like that, but most are ostensibly memories. Our children have access to instant nostalgia, fast glimpses of what their life was like a minute, a day, a month and a year ago.
How strange it must be to watch yourself grow up in real-time.
All three kids want to see photos immediately after they are taken. They will all also ask at various times to see “pictures of me,” which basically means getting access to the entire photo trove of my phone or my wife’s phone (or perhaps a slightly more curated experience like the pictures we have posted on Instagram over the years).
They also have made a handful of video compilations of zoo visits or amusing household endeavors over the years and assembled them on a YouTube channel that they (usually just the two youngest at this point) watch as if it was just normal TV.
They can watch or scroll for a long time (maybe even an hour, which counts as a long time these days when attention spans often need to be converted to dog years).
I might catch myself doing the same after they are done, or while searching for a specific photo from many years ago.
It’s strange for me, too.
She looks so young there. Wasn’t that just … wait … three years ago?
That was a great day. We should go back there sometime.
Where did the time go?
So much access to the recent past can make it hard to stay in the present.
But like so many other things that change and alter our realities, this access is only strange to me because I knew something far different.
Our kids have never known anything other than being able to see a catalog of their memories instantly or to take 60 selfies in the span of a few minutes (as I sometimes find when they disappear with my phone and reappear later).
Maybe being anthropologists of their own lives helps them maximize and comprehend the present in a more fulfilling way.
Maybe the pictures they show their own children someday will tell a more complete story than a handful of snapshots in a photo album.
Probably there will be something else entirely new in the future that will make their kids think that our experiences now are quaint and that my childhood experiences are ancient.
I close my eyes.
When I time travel forward in my mind, it is with the express purpose of seeing how the past played out and hoping I took the right pictures along the way.
As I try to do from time to time, usually at the start of a month or maybe even a season (hello summer!) here are a few odds and ends that work better as paragraphs than full-on essays. Most of these are phrases that I quickly jot down in my phone notes, leaving my future self to explain later.
A week or so again, I wrote down “re-piphany,” a word that I have come to use to describe the process of having a breakthrough thought or idea, having it sink to the back of your mind behind the clutter of more urgent or practical thoughts, only to rediscover it thanks to a quiet moment or other prompt. The irony is I have thought about re-piphany before, only to forget about it.
I’m currently listening to “The Creative Act: A Way of Being” by Rick Rubin, the groundbreaking record producer (among other things). I’ve read a lot of good books already this year, but this one might be the most personally important. Listening to his vignettes on the creative process and how it comes about is like listening to both long-forgotten internal monologues and a fearless external voice. The highest compliment I can pay the work is that it always puts me in the right frame of mind to have the thoughts that lead to creative work.
Another phone note: “Loosen but don’t let go.” Our oldest daughter, now 11, fits into that space right now and I’m pretty sure I was thinking of her when I wrote it. Last night, as we took a family walk, she asked if we could go back sometime to a rope swing that hung from a tree overlooking a perilous slope in our old Minneapolis neighborhood. We used to go there when she was 6 or 7 during her remote learning breaks during COVID, just the two of us, often with me running and her riding her bike to get there. She would swing high, thrilled, trying to go a little further each time to kick a distant branch. I would watch, thrilled but nervous, relieved every time she returned to the ground. Those were moments of sweetness and novelty in a time of difficulty and sameness, and it was a good reminder that the spontaneous things we invent are often the core memories we never imagined they would become. She had a friend from Minneapolis with her on our walk last night, and the friend said she thinks the swing has since been taken down because it was too dangerous. We’re going to need to see that with our own eyes before we let go of it.
If the title of this piece reminded you of the song by The Cure, the song by Elliott Smith or both, you are not alone. I’ve listened to both in the last 24 yours.
One more note of pure gratitude: Thank you to anyone and everyone who continues to support this writing project. Whether you are a subscriber, an occasional reader or someone here for the first time, it means the world to me that my words and thoughts are playing even a small role in your life.