September 1958. I was not quite a year old, in the front yard of my parents’ house in Milwaukee. My mother took the picture, she was always documenting ordinary moments.
The man holding my hand is my brother in law. He married my sister, who was twenty years older than me, and he 9 years older than my sister. He was steady, youthful, funny and kind. He died 6 years ago at 92.
My mother had no idea what she was capturing that morning. Neither did I. But I was in good hands.
Age 8 or so. Me and my dad in Colorado ‘panning for gold’ at one of those tourist Gold Rush things. My mom snapped this photo. I had a small gold nugget that my dad bought me in the gift shop that I had forever.
3rd grade, so about 1966? Me standing in front of my house about to walk to school. My mom took the photo probably because she had just made me that new triangular scarf that we all wore then. I took it off halfway to school of course. Then one day, somehow a bird pooped on my head and I had to confess to my mom that I was not wearing the scarf which she then proclaimed that the SOLE PURPOSE of that scarf was to protect my hair from bird droppings. I look like a little babushka.
We all have those photographs of us. Where we’re just sitting there in a room doing seemingly nothing. Somebody took a snapshot. Why? No idea.  I’m sure it was my mother that took the picture. Maybe she saw the light coming in from the shears hanging in that window, the sunlight shining in. Or maybe she had just sewn that outfit I’m wearing and she was trying to get a picture of it which is probably the most likely explanation. What is weird is that I can remember that day when I was just sitting there…. I remember the fabric of the sofa and the crisp cotton of the top and the “peddle pushers” she had made me. The sofa was actually part of a sectional that my mother had separated . I have no recollection of the vase and flowers though.
I’ve looked at this old photo of me many times, I’m about 18 months. There is always something in painting these snapshots that make me reflect but this one stirred something really deep. Hit me really hard.
My little feet. My little hands. LIttle me
Safe, small, and full of a future I couldn’t see then.
There’s something in that light, that moment that seemed to unfold with every brush stroke. Maybe you feel it too…..as a memory of your own little me.
In the photograph that inspired this painting, I’m about six or seven, holding a ball over my head like I’m about to shout “Catch!” I was looking at the person who took the photo, expecting them to be on the other end, ready. But they were taking the photo so how could they catch that ball? But now, in the painting, the person I’m looking at is you. The photographer has disappeared, and now you, the viewer, are the one I’m throwing it to. Maybe the ball is just a ball—or maybe it’s a stand-in for all the things we send out into the world with hope: a gesture, a story, a need, a truth. As a child, I believed someone would be there to catch it. I’m not sure they were.
But here you are. Catch!