Project Process INTERVIEWS: The Family Album, Memories all the same.

The Family Album: Fact or Fiction?

Memories all the same.

I really wanted this to be a free conversation rather than an interview with specific questions. When dealing with photos from the past and the ever-intangible concept of memory, I feel it is most beneficial to create a dialogue, building off of one another’s memories to create a collaborative recollection of the past. After all, a photo can only say so much. It is the imagination and faulty remembrance that fills in the gaps.

I chose photos that I hoped would elicit a meaningful response about the people in them, the day or year or place that moment was taken. I knew how it would go, which photos would bring up which stories I had heard before or moments I somewhat remember myself, but I dug through photo albums to find photos I had never seen, moments i had never heard of and certainly did not remember, if i was even alive at that time at all…

Interview with my Mother:

1. Uh oh, are you trying to make me cry? (*starts to cry*)

My mom always loved entertaining and having family around. And this photo just makes me think about when she always used to sing this song about the party being over when everyone had to go, singing “its time to say goodbye, over the party is…” And everybody thought it was cute when she did it I remember it so clearly.

She died when she was 39, maybe she was in her mid 30’s there.

2. I just remember being very happy and not stressed at all. It all went so perfectly. We got married in the same church my parents got married in. And it was just a good party. Calvin was supposed to walk down the aisle with us but Grandma didn’t really think he should. After we got married he walked down the aisle with us out of the church though.

3. We were in Michigan with all the kids and spent most of the time exploring the sand dunes. That’s little Madeleine and Uncle Finn and Fiona had us all visit. You were just a baby.

4. That was in Michigan again and Kevin and Fiona had all the kids in the house so Dad and I snuck down to the beach to take pictures. There’s some of me with my top off too, I remember those.

5. I don’t know how old you were when you made those scrapbooks, maybe 6? I just remember getting all the old photos developed and thinking it’d be so cute if I could get you guys to do it with me so I let you guys write whatever you wanted once I put them all together.

Celia wore that same dress her first day of Kindergarten. I just remember you being happy and having a good day because for preschool you had a hard transition. You really didn’t like preschool a lot. You cried a lot, so we weren’t sure if you’d be better.

6. Oh my gosh. This day with the watering can you were throwing up all day nonstop with some virus. And I don’t know why but you never ever ever let me put you in a dress but this day you put on a dress for some reason. So I loved that sailor dress on you let you play around in the backyard when you and I were home alone sick.

And the swing was in our front yard I think? Oh no it was in our backyard that I made Dad make because I wanted a tire swing like I grew up with in Wisconsin. We had this awesome big tire swing at the lake that was so great and we’d spend hours on. But the one we tried to do in the backyard was too close to the big hill back there so it didn’t have the best radius to swing. You all still loved it though.

7. That was on our front stoop in Chicago. Definitely not before Cal, I think baby Calvin must’ve taken that picture. And the second one isn’t even posed, you really were just looking at Dad’s uvula and so curious. 

8. That with you shirtless with a skirt on a tricycle is one of my favorites. You would be so upset when we had to take you off the bike, and also put on a shirt I guess. The third child, we’d really let you do whatever, you were just so happy and stubborn all at once. Those were both in Port Chester, the tricycle one the week of your birthday in July I think. 

9. Yea thats Chicago on our street. And that’s us all piled in the moving truck I remember Celia and you were so confused. Pop drove the moving truck, can you believe that?

 

Interview with my Father:

1. I remember that your mother and I were left, at our reception site because we saw everyone off and then we realized we didn’t have a ride and it was just her and I and the owner in the really nice garden at the place we were at. And everyone else was gone on the bus after we said goodbye to everyone.

2. (italicized = me) What about this? I still have it and all I remember is that I really wanted to see you in your uniform but you only changed at work so you brought this home for me as a surprise.

That was just a random weird old polaroid shot that someone took of me off guard, walking through. I remember you had that picture and i really just cant believe how skinny and young i look every time I see it. I still have those shirts, hanging downstairs somewhere and there is no possible way I could ever fit into them now.

That must’ve been 2003? 2002, my first year or second year. And someone just snapped a picture they shouldn’t have snapped with a department polaroid. And I really just cant believe I was ever that skinny because i still have those shirts.

3. I remember I like this picture, to me its interesting, because this is just the moving truck outside our house on Cornelia street but if you go up, it looks like its a western mountain sunset in the back to me. Its always so weird to me that every time I look at it I see it. Up here, its alnost like some mesa in Arizona with a beautiful sunset but really its only the packed moving truck. And I look at it and think I know exactly where that was but it looks like theres a backdrop of some crazy sunset in the west every time.

I mean I guess I can see it now, but I’ve never noticed that. I always just liked Calvin’s outfit and how Celia’s eating a massive extra large McDonalds fries.

Is she really? Wow, I didn’t even notice that. 

She has a Happy Meals toy in her hand, I’m a baby eating fries, we probably just got McDonalds for the ride.

All I see is the back as a beautiful sunset, I didn’t even notice the fries.

4. I remember going down there to the Top of the Rock but I don’t remember exactly why we did it. I think you did skip a day of school, I’d agree. It was a treat. But I remember I think a guy I used to work midnights with in Harlem worked there as security and he told me if I came down there one weekday we could go for free. So I think i just decided to take you out of school and it’d be a cool day to head to the Rockefeller Center and check out the view.

5. Bermuda, well i almost got killed by a golf cart

You did almost get run over and killed by a golf cart that was crazy.

I mean, I thought Bermuda was so cool and I was so happy to take you guys there. I remember i had just quit smoking, it was the first trip i took after i had quit and we had such a nice trip. We stayed at that really nice but weird 9 beaches resort and I remember the weather was awful almost the entire time.

Yes and i remember their was a wedding that got rained out and we were the only ones there with the entire wedding party

It was so weird for me because i had quit smoking in January and it was the first time that i had taken a trip and went to the airport, flew, went to the airport and made it to the hotel and didn’t smoke and it actually started to click in that this is so great its my first time I don’t need to sneak away and smoke a cigarette at all…And it was when we had a disposable camera and one day we left it on the beach and when we got it developed when we got back, two drunks dudes had taken about four photos on it thumbs up all bombed and just left it there for us. I remember the water was freezing down there because the gulf stream had flowed in a different direction and it does that. 

And i remember you came back from swimming far by yourself and said you say a barracuda and we weren’t swimming because we were too cold but you came back all freaked out

That Bermuda trip was so great with Celia and you and I and we were all in such a small but beautiful tent-like cabana and one night the whole place was banging shaking around because of the wind and storms.

Did we even leave the resort I feel like we didn’t?

Yea we did Remember we had that really weird walk into town with all those cars coming by

Woah, yes, I thought that was a dream I had or in Italy or something. But yes I remember that walk so clearly, that was Bermuda?

And we had to walk with about 2 feet until the road and had to peer around buildings to see if we could make it past with the cars rushing by

Yes I remember being so scared and confused because all the cars were on the opposite side of the road

*he thinks I stopped recording but I find a few more photos after I say the last one!*

It is weird with pictures like that when you don’t realize…like about our wedding, thats really, i mean not all i remember but it is really a blur or blank. I just remember the end of the night being left there together. And then feeling so strange the next day leaving Calvin for the first time with my parents and going to Paris.

Do you remember your wedding song?

No I don’t, that a good question, but I don’t. So if your mother says she does she’s full of shit, I really don’t, I have no idea, but I should.

6. I really love all these pictures of the shore and some of them are super dark but you can still tell who everyone is and theres so many of them and so many of us

Those really were such good trips down there. And that was one of the things I got annoyed with my parents about after they did that and it was so sweet but really i guess kids got older and school didn’t work and I don’t know why, why would I hold that against them? But they really did such a nice thing with finding those houses on the beach and having everyone down there. But then it fell off and Im sure its not really there fault

Well, Im sure everything you’re mad at them about, isn’t really their fault, its just your perception!

7. Oh god, yea, why’d you scan that one?

That place was so disgusting and so cool at the same time and I mean we were so happy to be there but the mess and stench during the festival, Pamplona was just awful.

I had just gotten convinced by 3 guys I worked with in Harlem because one the guys wanted to go and run with the bulls every year he loved it so much. And I hated it, I mean i did it but thats where I ended up just against the wall. I was early 30 something and it was an okay trip but the guys I was with some were younger and drunken idiots but that really was a crazy couple of days. The town for that one week is just overrun with people and just young kids, college kids all there sleeping in the streets or doing whatever to be there for the festival.

But it really was cool, its a good place to just be there but every year during that festival its all just transients. And i’d assume its close to, I haven’t been, only on the periphery days, but a lot like Mardi Gras where you get the family parades and older people into it for a bit but then the main events of it all are just a mess and New Orleans is destroyed. 

8. ( I forgot to show him the camping photo so I texted him tonight, asking for his remarks. Instead, he sends me back one of his favorite photos of me as a child, on another camping trip, or maybe the same one…)

 

 

We went to 3 or 4 different places but that canoe was in Maine. In Maine at Acadia National Park it’s very rocky by the ocean. You guys loved running up and down rocks but it always made me nervous.

Maine? I never knew we went to Maine. All I remember from camping are the salamanders and the place with the beautiful swimming lake area that we couldn’t swim in because they made you do a test and laps and I refused. And one trip I fake snored every night because for some reason I wished I snored and would pretend I was asleep. I thought I tricked everyone every night but no one believed me and I’d hear Cal and Cel saying I’m faking it.

I don’t remember the snoring but yes those are all different spots. Bashbish Falls, and Little Pond had the salamanders. That was everyone’s favorite.

afterthoughts:

I knew my mother would not be able to say much, she does not have a very good memory, but I know she would never admit it. I chose a few photos that I asked both my mother and father about, but I didn’t want them all to be the same. Maybe I should have interviewed them together. Then, it would have been an even more collaborative effort.

nonetheless, i appreciate the response I got, and the gaps in my memory that are now indirectly filled. While this is my final project, this is something i hope to never stop doing. I believe that in order to make my own moments, I must understand those that have come before me. Or, at most, I must do so for my own sake to relish in the nostalgia and beauty of the lives of my parents and the moments I didn’t have the chance to experience.