In the last couple of months I’ve helped two close friends as they sorted belongings collected over lifetimes. Moving is always a challenge, and in some regards always emotional when dealing with decades of detritus; both of these moves were particularly poignant because both were related to the loss of someone they love and significant changes in each of their lives as a result. And, of course, the very act of sorting through is telling- what we collect, accumulate around us, the face we show the world and the hidden parts of ourselves that our loved ones are so surprised by even when they thought they knew us intimately. I immediately came home and cleared out my closets; Lord knows, I don’t want my children to know how many shoes I really have…
I was quite moved as I helped these friends sort through and tell their stories. And I started to think about what it is we’re searching for when we “collect” things around us, what expression of “self” is in our possessions. As we cleared things away and sifted through dusty boxes, we kept stopping to look at pictures and little things with no intrinsic value- the stories of a lifetime; touchstones into the soul and windows into our lives. Scribbled notes, ticket stubs, old recipes, childhood toys and collections; each with a story and a memory attached, more valuable than the accumulated “stuff” in the china cabinet. And pictures- especially the pictures. The true talismen of our lives lived.
Our digital age has made photographs more nebulous- we see them on a computer screen, scroll through them on Facebook, but less and less do we memorialize our moments of connection in our space. We have picture “frames” that flip through slides; we hang our TVs over the fireplace like paintings, and even billboards are disappearing to the motility of video screens. Not locked in, lacking specificity, the images slide by, unfixed and ever changing; it’s rare that we actually put our full attention anywhere for more than a few seconds. “Fixed” images are becoming a smaller part of our environments, and the tangible mementos of events in our lives are lost to our “paperless” lives. As we detach from those objects, what will be the conduit to connect us to our stories now?
I’m a painter first. Before I was a designer, before I wrote anything, before I started to think about what I was supposed to “do” with my life, I painted pictures. I stopped for many years, until my very perceptive and thoughtful daughter bought me an easel and paints, and told me to get back to work. It was part of a life changing time, and it changed my life. 16 years later, my first voice remains in the colors of a paintbox, and my favorite part of what I do for clients is “painting” their space; finding a palette that is expressive of their own personal vision, pulling together textures and colors that make their space “home”.
Not unlike photographs, my paintings “frame” memories. No one looking at them would guess that- mostly they seem somewhat blurry landscapes or abstractions of color that have little resemblance to “reality”. But each one tells a story of a time, or a place, or an event; as much as in a photograph, they are the snapshots of my life and when I share them, I’m sharing the story of my life in “still” images.
Of late, I’m liking the literal just as much; I’ve created a little gallery in my little studio, surrounding myself with moments from my lifetime and before- from my parent’s wedding picture through my granddaughter’s hayride last weekend. I’m printing them, framing them and planting them firmly in space: my own talismen. They keep me company when I’m lonely, remind me of the richness of my life and are markers of my place, in time, on this earth.
When I was a young woman I was interested in the stories of my family. I remember sitting with my Aunt Helen, whose memory bank was rich and deep, and asking her questions about our family history. Precious time spent, indeed; Helen died soon after and had I not written those stories down, they would have disappeared. The stories, the small mementos; the tokens and treasures saved in taped up boxes under the eaves explain much of who we are and play a part in what comes next.
We pass our stories on from one generation to the next whether intentionally or not. In our behavior, in our demeanor, in how we treat each other, we pay our lives and our loves forward, and our actions and reactions reverberate through time and into all our connections. It’s the best of what we share. And when the attics and basements are cleared out, it’s what we really have.
