Evidence

You must remember this...

I was not being efficient, and this was more than evident in the last few days as we sifted through hundreds of photographs. Friends or families offered the following bits of advice. “

Don’t look at them!

Throw them in a box and look at them in Birmingham.

You’re not looking at them, are you?

Oh my God, you’re looking at them, aren’t you?

But how do I not look? The Halloween picture where tiny Norah donned a bright orange glam Bowie wig and Lucy was Janis Joplin and Kiffen and I appear just unknowable weirdos in costumes - I can’t tell what we were anyway. Or the Halloween Flannery was Van Gogh or a Neanderthal or the seedy William H. Macy character from “Boogie Nights” or Nosferatu? Or when Lucy was a hamburger and her friend, Paulina, the fries? Their friend Megan was an apple pie because she didn’t want to be a Coke, so there was no Coke in the ensemble. Or the year, Norah was a warm ballerina because I made her wear a coat over her tights and leotard. Or when Lucy was the Tin Man? Kiffen was a master of carving pumpkins, cardboard costumes, spirit gum, and adhesive body tape for wigs and werewolf fur.

I was always happy to be in the background of Halloween, a kind of stagehand, roasting pumpkin seeds, assisting with costumes, and handing out candy. For a few years, I made a stuffed dummy with a skull head that sat slumped outside to greet trick-or-treaters, but he didn’t scare anybody The dogs were never in costume on Halloween, mostly because they were in costume for so much of the rest of the year. A dear friend, Mike, recalls his first meeting our beloved black labrador retriever, Clancy, wearing a “string of pearls, poor thing.”

Norah, the third child, by all experience, should have but a few pictures of her as a kid being the third kid, but Lucy was the family photographer, so Lucy would take Norah on photography shoots. I just found a whole batch of Norah circa age seven that I don’t ever remember seeing. How does one look not look? I try but I can’t help it. I try to be efficient, but I linger over eyes, freckles, and mouths.

Maybe I am looking for evidence - for some kind of proof that I wasn’t a bad mother. I was distracted, ambitious, impatient, and a whole bunch of other things, and so I study the pictures looking for signs. The “bad mother” thing is such a cliche, yawn, but I always circle back to it, looking for clues.

And as we prepare for this move, people have been asking the following questions, delivered directly or indirectly:

Will you take Flannery with you?

Is Flan going too?

How can they leave their son?

What will he do without them in the city?

These are the knifey/bladey/twisty questions that burrow deep - death by a thousand cuts. Flannery is going to be 35 this fall. We’re not leaving a nine-year-old, but I still picture the invisible tsk-tsking chorus of: “Have you tried this?” or “Have you tried that?” or “Maybe you could consider…”

And it does scare me to leave. How do I leave? How do I not look? How do I not look back on everything? I think of the tale of Orpheus going to the underworld and how Hades struck a deal with him that he could have his beloved Eurydice back as long as he didn’t look back as he led her out of the cave. That was the bargain. Orpheus must trust that Hades will keep his word and Eurydice will follow him. But just as the journey to the outside world is almost over, the sun in sight, he loses his nerve and thinks, I’ll look once - just once - and when he does to see if she’s there, it’s over in a flash, and Eurydice is swallowed back up in the underworld.

Poor Orpheus. Poor me.

So I sift through pictures. I look back. I try to remember. I ask myself what I missed. What I couldn't see or refused to see?

Sweaty Orpheus amidst the debris, detritus, and the fallout of years holding up evidence: “Remember this?”

Then friends say the following:

Take a break.

Go see Theatre Camp.

Go See Barbie.

Go visit your mom.

And so we do. We leave the pictures and the mess, and we drive to San Diego. We’ll pick up where we left off when we get home.