When my mother and her sisters gathered they did so in a circle. They would whisper amongst themselves, their words coming out of their mouths sharply, hitting their teeth and passing through their lips in a soft whistle. They gathered at an oak table, and its strong tall legs held the three of them snugly together, knee-to-knee. Its surface was decorated with a map of intricate scratches and grooves, perhaps frequently oiled by previous owners but rubbed raw in the years it had stood in our kitchen. My mother and her sisters were all round, with fat fingers and ankles that stuck out from the bottom of their pants like juicy plums. Their folds of skin seemed to seep together as they sat in their circle. I had always imagined it would feel safe and cozy in their unison of flesh, like climbing between giant marshmallows, soft and pudgy.
My mother and her sisters believed that everything-animals, inanimate objects, and people especially-all entered the world with stories. That oak table, for instance, apparently had wild, jubilous stories of its own. I just had to listen to it. Which was why my mother and her sisters gathered: to tell stories and to listen.
I had never been good at listening. I saw things instead. It started when I was twelve, picking up Bessie’s 35mm camera and clumsily looking through the little box, balancing its heavy body in my hand as I moved my torso, scanning the field behind our house. I was enthralled with the way everything fit neatly in the camera’s tiny square, how I was capable of making someone think that where I lived was actually beautiful by blocking out say, the rotting red barn and instead focusing on the sunflower patch or neat little vegetable garden. And so it began: my compulsion for capturing moments of mistaken beauty, or even real beauty if I was lucky enough to find it.
My mother and her sisters had trouble finding stories in the photos I took.
“Do you listen to the objects before you take their photo Dara?” Joan would inquire as they shuffled through the freshly developed prints, pausing to study each glossy one and then talk about it, their voices muffled.
“No, no, I don’t think you did,” Bessie always said. “For if you did, the story would be obvious. There is no vulnerability, happiness, sadness, anguish in these photos. That is what great photographers do. They tell the stories of people or animals or objects that can’t do it themselves. They emanate feelings.”
I didn’t know how to listen to inanimate objects. Or animals. And sometimes people’s stories were hard to understand as well; something that was meaningful to them could be completely bogus to me.
So I began looking for stories, or objects that had one to share. There was the barn, falling apart, windows smashed and paint peeling so that it dyed the earth red around it. One of the hinges had come off the door frame and it stood tilted, leaning against the earth, its anchor. The barn looked sad. I captured the windows, the falling apart door and the red earth surrounding it.
“It’s our abandoned barn,” my mother noted.
“Joan, what’s the story?” Bessie said, peering at the series of photos that now sat in front of them, the lamp above it reflecting off their glossy surfaces.
“It’s a barn. It was once taken care of. Now its not.”
“You didn’t listen to it,” they agreed in unison.
“You just captured what you saw. A forgotten barn.”
The photos were slid towards me by a set of pudgy hands.
After my grandfather died, what he could keep up of the farm in his old age slowly withered away. The flowers began to wilt, the huge field of sunflowers eventually died off after seasons of not being cared for, the vegetable garden (once thriving with every sort of salad additive) became a bed for just heads of lettuce. There was a picture of the barn when it stood straight that hung by the oak table. I guessed my mother and her sisters were about eight in the photo by the way their gangly elbows and knees stuck out at uneven angles, my grandfather standing behind them with his hands on Joan’s shoulders. The barn had been freshly painted traditional fire engine red, the white window frames glowing.
Now standing in front of the barn, it was hard to believe it used to look as it did in that photo. The cold winter months and neglect led it to sit and rot. My mother and her sisters had no shame.
***
My mother and her sisters believed that everything-animals, inanimate objects, and people especially-all entered the world with stories. That oak table, for instance, apparently had wild, jubilous stories of its own. I just had to listen to it. Which was why my mother and her sisters gathered: to tell stories and to listen.
I had never been good at listening. I saw things instead. It started when I was twelve, picking up Bessie’s 35mm camera and clumsily looking through the little box, balancing its heavy body in my hand as I moved my torso, scanning the field behind our house. I was enthralled with the way everything fit neatly in the camera’s tiny square, how I was capable of making someone think that where I lived was actually beautiful by blocking out say, the rotting red barn and instead focusing on the sunflower patch or neat little vegetable garden. And so it began: my compulsion for capturing moments of mistaken beauty, or even real beauty if I was lucky enough to find it.
My mother and her sisters had trouble finding stories in the photos I took.
“Do you listen to the objects before you take their photo Dara?” Joan would inquire as they shuffled through the freshly developed prints, pausing to study each glossy one and then talk about it, their voices muffled.
“No, no, I don’t think you did,” Bessie always said. “For if you did, the story would be obvious. There is no vulnerability, happiness, sadness, anguish in these photos. That is what great photographers do. They tell the stories of people or animals or objects that can’t do it themselves. They emanate feelings.”
I didn’t know how to listen to inanimate objects. Or animals. And sometimes people’s stories were hard to understand as well; something that was meaningful to them could be completely bogus to me.
So I began looking for stories, or objects that had one to share. There was the barn, falling apart, windows smashed and paint peeling so that it dyed the earth red around it. One of the hinges had come off the door frame and it stood tilted, leaning against the earth, its anchor. The barn looked sad. I captured the windows, the falling apart door and the red earth surrounding it.
“It’s our abandoned barn,” my mother noted.
“Joan, what’s the story?” Bessie said, peering at the series of photos that now sat in front of them, the lamp above it reflecting off their glossy surfaces.
“It’s a barn. It was once taken care of. Now its not.”
“You didn’t listen to it,” they agreed in unison.
“You just captured what you saw. A forgotten barn.”
The photos were slid towards me by a set of pudgy hands.
After my grandfather died, what he could keep up of the farm in his old age slowly withered away. The flowers began to wilt, the huge field of sunflowers eventually died off after seasons of not being cared for, the vegetable garden (once thriving with every sort of salad additive) became a bed for just heads of lettuce. There was a picture of the barn when it stood straight that hung by the oak table. I guessed my mother and her sisters were about eight in the photo by the way their gangly elbows and knees stuck out at uneven angles, my grandfather standing behind them with his hands on Joan’s shoulders. The barn had been freshly painted traditional fire engine red, the white window frames glowing.
Now standing in front of the barn, it was hard to believe it used to look as it did in that photo. The cold winter months and neglect led it to sit and rot. My mother and her sisters had no shame.
***
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