Who ARE these people?
I always promise myself I will sift through the haphazard picture files in my computer and put them in some kind of order. If my disc crashes, I am absolutely toast. I have some pictures printed and / or on CD, but time, mildew, and my son’s love of flinging CDs have alerted me to the fact that if I am not careful, I won’t have any records of anything!
In boxes somewhere are the “family photo albums” that I’ve had since I met my husband, and some from before, although those are mostly scrapbooked postcards, birthday cards, etc. Recently on Facebook I had a friend who dug out old college photos and posted them, and as I had far too many important things to do, I decided to do same instead. After all , what else is a scanner for?
It then hit me, as it has in the past but not as HARD, that I used to be in a lot of pictures and as I’ve aged, this is not the case.
Granted, if I have access to the digital camera that has captured my image, I will delete any and all pictures of myself. I don’t know whether I expect myself to look different or whether I photograph badly but I hate the way I look in pictures! Some of this may be due to the fact that I generally have more important things to do than say, look in the mirror on the way out of my house or God forbid slap on some paint. I do a facial hair check, a toothpaste-at-the-corners-of-my-mouth check, and out I go. Of course, sometimes I look in the mirror after dropping Ed at school and see I have a big piece of hair sticking up or something, but I’d rather have people love me for my mind, and anyway, who they hell do I think I’m impressing???
I look cute in the pictures of me at college. I never thought of myself as anything but somewhat chubby and blah, but compared to now I think, “gee…I was cute back then!”
I don’t know what happened to my brain as I aged. I was, as my excuse, often the person behind the camera so the landscapes, the girls, the pets, my friends number legion. If someone took a picture of me (pre digital, of course) not only would I dispose of the print, sometimes I’d actually ditch the negative.
Now I regret that any time I get together with my friends, there are NO pictures of us, especially if they have kids as well. My sister in law and I fall over each other to get pictures and video of the boys…but no pictures of US! I had big plans of having a lot of pictures from a recent family visit down south, and I do, but none of me and my cousin. Heck, I barely have any of myself and my son together.
Around the time Ed was born, I was, in my own mind, HUGE. 162 pounds at 4′11″ is not a pretty sight. Granted, much of it was my tremendous breasts, placenta, extra blood et al (yes, the only time in my life I’ve ever been able to cope with the cold). My feet didn’t fit into my shoes. I had this huge, flaccid face. I kept getting told I barely changed at all during pregnancy (thanks a LOT, guys). When I was giving, birth, my doula was a photographer, and I asked her to take some pictures. They are beautiful, black and white (though none of the actual birth…that was a big nono). My son was so beautiful I could actually cry now, thinking about it. I was in rough shape, lost a lot of blood, passed out from exhaustion. I look awful. But my son is beautiful, even without my endorphins pumping away. I remember being so exhausted and in pain but I still couldn’t sleep…I just kept looking at him, thinking about the fact that he was finally here and how gorgeous and perfect he was and how much I loved him.
I have pictures of the three of us the next day. My doula was back with the camera. My son is perfect. My husband looks fine. I look AWFUL, AWFUL, AWFUL. I have a picture of me kissing Ed and there is my beautiful child and my big, fat face. I look like something that snuck up on him and was trying to eat him.
There are pictures of me with Ed post birth. I didn’t lose the baby weight easily and had permanent dark circles under my eyes. I had my hair back and up most of the time and as long as my front was covered with the boppy pillow you couldn’t see how huge I was.
I can’t say I went through postpartum depression per se. The truth was that aside from the exhaustion and hormonal changes that every new mom goes through, there were some not so nice things happening in my life at that time. My marriage was very strained and I spent much of my time alone as my absence in the office meant a lot of long days for my husband. My mom lived in Connecticut and wouldn’t even hold Ed, let alone come to help me, as she was still reeling with the fact of my dad’s sudden death. My brother was mentally ill, my sister in law was going through many of the same things as I (my son and nephew are 6 months apart), and the rest of my family were down south. I couldn’t keep up with Ed’s appetite so nursing was slowly going the way of all things. In effect, I was losing control.
I went to Weight Watchers. I followed the plan, dieted, exercised. It gave me focus, a goal, and social contact. I look better in pictures of myself then, but I look miserable. My family said I was ”wasting away” but I just looked like me, only thinner. In fact, in one pic I am wearing size 00 pants and still, to myself, look a little heavy.
My heart was wasting away, not my body. In my “thin” pictures I look a bit desperate. Looking at them makes me sad. But Ed looks happy. I focused on him, not myself.
Things got somewhat better after that. I am rarely in any pictures up until the time Ed was 18 months and I joined a rock cover band. There are many pictures of me on their website and frankly, I hate a lot of them 
. There are pictures of me at Southold Mothers Club events and as I don’t really care how I look when I am with the other moms I hate a lot of them, too, so basically I generally hate myself in pictures whether I’m all dolled up or slumming it. I don’t necessarily look TOO bad in some pictures. I’m not even sure how I want to look in pictures, I just don’t like the way I look. I don’t expect to look like a movie star or anything; certainly the pictures I have of my ancestors bear no resemblance to movie stars, but just having them around my home I feel as if I’m strengthened by the presence of my blood, long dead. To be honest, I don’t know who some of them are, only that they are relations. Their eyes in tintypes stare out at something unseen, and I can say this one looks like my mom, another like my cousin Cheryl, but even if I don’t know how they are related, at least there are pictures that have survived this long. My favorite is of some aunt of my grandmother’s, who she said was “not a very nice person”. She looks out, self-satisfied, from a sill in my living room and looms her “not very nice” aura. I have seen that look on my mom’s face, come to think of it…it’s one of my favorite pictures.
Ed still oves to be photographed, for now. In his intial sono, he’s hiding his face from the camera, scrabbling away from it when he can. I used to refer to our family as being from the “mafia”, as we all tended to cover our faces in photos. Does anyone like having their picture taken past a certain age, barring those whose livelihood depends on it? And why does that change?
