Mother, Grandmother
Mother on Ship
Passport Posing
Running to greet father
First communion
Venice
I started crying while sorting photographs of my mother’s childhood and could not say, at first, why I was so overcome. Perhaps it is because they are singularities: they exist -as does she- as poignant exemptions from all the abstract and general principles to which I subordinate reality; they are irreducible for me; I cannot partialize them as I do the rest of the universe.
For example: I tend to regard most tragedy with the notion of inexorability in mind; this is the world, I say, this is how life occurs; but I cannot so contextextualize her life, the struggles of which seem, to me, unforgivable and forever awful.
That is to say: I cannot forgive the universe for my mother’s suffering. I find myself desperately wishing I could have protected her from the things that befell her, as she protected me.
Sons and mothers, daughters and fathers. It occurred to me while I looked at these and other photos that these oceanic swells of feeling must be what parents feel for their children, and it even struck me that if I had a daughter I might feel this way, but I am not sure I could bear it. There seems to be no consolation once one falls into such an abyss; it seems pathological, feverish, compelling in a literal sense. With a child one might lose one’s will before the absolute of one’s love.
But I don’t know about children or parenthood and am not sure I will or want to. I do like these old family photos, though; I’ll add more to the set soon.
