I’m toying with the idea of a memoir eventually, just for myself. Rather than scratch little memories in notebooks that will get lost, they’re going here.

Do you know what the Rapture is? It’s something I’d heard about nearly every day for my entire childhood, so it’s surprising the number of friends who say, “The WHAT?” when I mention it. The Rapture is a fundamentalist Christian belief that one day Jesus will come to earth again (the “Second Coming”… which just sounds dirty to me, and now sounds dirty to you and YOU’RE WELCOME). I’m fuzzy on the logistics, but basically, he comes down, and then, I guess, bounces back to heaven, taking with him all of the Christians on the earth and leaving all the heathens to wallow in a cloud of drugs, booze, homosexuality and extra-marital sex (which kinda sounds like fun, actually.)

It wasn’t until age 16 that I started to believe the concept of the Rapture was probably crazy, but at 14 or so, I wavered between being scared of not being good enough to ascend to heaven and worrying that the rapture would happen during my period, resulting in the unsaved masses seeing my used maxi pad left laying in the sidewalk as I left my clothes behind and hurdled towards the clouds. This was a deep-seeded, traumatizing, legitimate fear of mine for YEARS, and I’m annoyed now with all the time I spent worrying about it. I should have been making art or something with that energy. Is this not the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard?

I was never cut out to be a Christian.

I’m toying with the idea of a memoir eventually, just for myself. Rather than scratch little memories in notebooks that will get lost, they’re going here.

In Paris last year, I raised my camera to snap a photo of my Grandma and cousin walking together, and my cousin squealed and ran away before I could press the shutter.

“Take a photo with your grandmother!” sighed my aunt.

Missing verbally, but still present behind her words, was the “Ugh! Teenagers!” sentiment. I watched Beth’s narrow shoulders tense together; mine did, too. She didn’t want to pose, and I wanted to take that photo even less. It is difficult enough to photograph someone who is requesting it; as a photographer, you’re asking for something from the person in front of the lens – even though it should seem like the reverse should be true – which is probably why I walk away from half my photo shoots and then scurry back, saying, “Oh, hey, one more thing. You need to pay me.” It feels like I’ve already taken so much.

I shuffled ahead, not wanting to hear the argument. A few minutes later, Beth slid alongside me. “You can take my picture with Grandma,” she mumbled.

“I don’t want to, hun, if you don’t want it.” I squeezed her shoulder fondly, trying to say she was understood. Our mothers are very different, but they are sisters, and I know well the grave emotional consequences of being “a daughter not doing what is asked”.

“No. It’s ok. Just take it.”

Being photographed was the easier thing for her to endure.

We stopped and they sat on a bench together; our grandmother put her arm around my cousin, who relaxed a tiny bit, and Grandma smiled.

“Smile Beth!” shrieked her mother. I lowered my camera and glowered.

“Shhh! I’m working here. And she doesn’t have to. Beth, you don’t have to. Just enjoy sitting with Grandma.”

My aunt backed down, our Grandmother continued to smile, and this was my shot.

I like it.

photo by nirus

I’m toying with the idea of a memoir eventually, just for myself. Rather than scratch little memories in notebooks that will get lost, they’re going here.

In first grade my teacher sent home a note reporting that, rather than do my schoolwork, I sat all day playing with a pencil shaving. On paper, it sounded so odd, but I remember turning that shaving over and over in my hand, admiring it, watching it flake apart, and it didn’t feel odd to me. It was interesting, and felt important. I was a Weird Kid; it is only now that I realize how cool I actually was, how the quirk that let me have deep appreciation for the tiny grooves in a flake of wood – a quirk that got me picked on mercilessly and concerned the adults in my life – has not only remained in some form 20+ years later, but actually served me well as an artist paid to focus on detail.

There was other stuff that made me weird, too: long conversations with the salamanders I found under rocks, poetry scrawled on my legs that I covered with my dresscode-mandated knee socks, and – the worst – songs that I made up for classmates to make them like me (that never actually worked.) So embarrassing! And yet… I still talk to the dogs all day every day. There are scraps of poems in a document on my iPad (I’ve upgraded a bit from my shins and ankles.) I still invent songs, although I’ve learned not to sing them to anyone older than a toddler.

It is fascinating how much we can change, grow, and still be much the same.

I’m toying with the idea of a memoir eventually, just for myself. Rather than scratch little memories in notebooks that will get lost, they’re going here.

When I was a freshman in college I needed a special dress for something. I was going to go to the mall to look when my mother stopped me.

“You should go to Syms instead,” she said. “They have better prices.”

“Ugh. I hate shopping at Syms. It’s crowded and messy, and the communal changing room freaks me out.”

(If you don’t know, Syms was department warehouse store where they got last-season retail branded clothes and sold them at large discounts. Every day was new inventory and the longer something sat, the lower its price was. The whole store was two overwhelming floors, each the size of a city block.)

“I think you a fool, Amber. You’re wasting money.”

“No.” I said, feeling a confidence that surprised me, “I don’t think it’s foolish. I think the shopping experience at the mall is worth the money.”

I still wondered if she was right – when your mother tells you you are something, you tend to believe it at least partially, even if it’s false – but I was pretty sure I knew what I was talking about. And I did. To this day I don’t shop in large, poorly organized stores looking for a bargain. It’s unnecessarily taxing on my soul and not worth the dollars saved.

This was the first time I consciously remember “knowing thyself.”