A piece of myself is gone.

February 28, 2016, Columbia (Missouri.)

A woman I loved died this morning in my hometown, in the South of France.
Fanette was one of my closest friends' mother. We grew up together, Zaza, her sister and I, our parents close friends, our childhoods a common territory, Fanette a constant presence.
The afternoons spent in the cavernous stone house deep in our old medieval village, two little girls playing in the stone shed full of magic off the patio, later watching dubbed American TV series in the cluttered room under the roof where Fanette sometimes accompanied us, later still, adolescents, listening to punk rock on the radio in Zaza’s room, her sister Sophie not quite as close but still. Fanette, towering in the art supplies store she owned a few blocks from their home, the smell of paint and pastels, her tall, bony, straight figure commanding and slightly frightening.
It is as if I had grown up in that family as much as in my own’s, Fanette’s taste for traditional French cooking the kind my mother never cooked, her brisk manner, the reassurance of her total authority, Fanette and Jacques, always uttered in that order by my mother and father, their friends Fanette et Jacques, these words mapping my childhood as much as the rooms of my home and roads of my village, the old dark stone village house full of paintings, sculptures and artifacts that secretly scared me, the family were avid collectors and art lovers, the cavernous house and its smells, the smell of polished wood, of stone, of the magical territory of my child mind, that house the realm of my childhood, Fanette, its implacable captain.
She died this morning, at home, surrounded by her family, peacefully my mother told me.
My friend lost her mother, and I a piece of myself too.

Silent partner.

February 14, 2016, Columbia (Missouri.)

Nicolas has been struggling with attention at school all this week, and with frustration at home, the old sibling rivalries, frustration and anger turned into screeching cries, triggered by nothing. 
For me this means a lot of thinking and agonizing about how to teach my kids the emotional and social skills they need to develop into emotionally and socially stable, fulfilled and happy adults, it means a lot of thinking back into my own childhood and how my own insecurities developed, and stayed, and whether I can successfully teach those so important skills to my kids when I’m so unsure about mastering them myself. It means a lot of time spent parenting, and less for photography.
Being a single mother means the responsibility for all this, and everything else, rests on me, and just me. Sometimes the pressure feels just overwhelming. But there is the grace, the daily drop of happiness, and gratitude, the grace and the rain and looking up at the grey skies, swirling in the cries.
Grace: my children. They were planned; they have been my priority since I brought them into this world; they come first.
This means sometimes, most of the time, my days are filled with them, and work, and photography goes under the surface, although it is always there, like a friend walking by my side, my silent partner.

January breeze.

February 7, 2016, Columbia (Missouri.)

We camped out in the total rehab of a house on an air mattress that made my back screech, amidst the rubble and the dirt, with the tall windows open because it smelled of paint, and there was happiness.
The weather warm enough for spring, I opened the windows to let the breeze in, late January and it’s like sneaking out of winter for a night, and breathed in happiness, all together again, so uncomfortable and so perfectly joyful, silly, and in the morning, when I was scrubbing on, there was a work of art: right there the windows in the kids room, neatly covered in newspaper because of painting the walls, and the light through the print, an ephemeral work of art, beauty.
What makes a life worth living?
Streams of simple happiness in the unexpected, two boys, raising them to be caring, and love, or maybe just the light through the window, and the caress of an impossible January breeze.

All that matters.

January 16, 2016, Columbia, (Missouri.)

A week of working on a photography project is a good week.
The sheer enchantment of it, for it has been so long, and it is rejuvenating to be simply working, but also to be working on something that is relevant to the day’s discourse and important to tell, something you feel strongly about. It is what we’re here for, after all, all of us, photographers, mothers, writers, laborers, artists, brothers, teachers, activists, all of us toiling at the day’s work, all of us and it is all that matters, in our last hour, the helping, inspiring, making this shared world a little kinder, a little fairer, or just a little more beautiful.
A week of the usual daily chores, a good week at school for the boys, praise and pride, an uneventful week at work, but for seeing small kids’ minds struggling and growing, fascinating, and the work from my heart and soul, not much to report but a sense of accomplishment I am ever grateful to have thanks to the art of photography.
That is all for this week, and it is a lot.

Endless laughter.

January 9, 2016, Columbia (Missouri.)

I survived the holidays and all the new year’s wishes of joy and love, especially love.
I’m ready to move on, I’ve packed away the nostalgia, accepted the fact that nothing supported it but emptiness and longing.
The road opened up again, I’ll see where it goes, it is mine alone.
The holidays, Texas and my sister-in-law, my only sister, and an emotional landscape I know too well, a landscape where I get lost and can’t find myself, but also a landscape of family, or the closest to family I can claim on this side of the Atlantic, and which is about to become a loaded field of memories and discarded opportunities, and in the end just nothing.
My sister-in-law lives in a small town east of Dallas and has built a life there, started a family, a business. I could fit in and would probably be able to grow my photo business a lot faster thanks to her connections to the Latino community and beyond. I never will because the last thing I want now is to get closer to what used to be. The road here ended.
I’ll stay away and I’ll dream of much farther away,  there is always New York and going back in time there, I was young in New York in the eighties, the grit and the possibilities, but I’ll stay in the Midwest and I’ll keep on taking life a step at a time, I’ll move to St Louis come spring so the kids can enroll in a public charter French immersion school there and I’ll hope for the best, I’ll laugh my head off, I’ll call my friends, I’ll try to earn some money doing what I love, taking pictures, speaking in images, and maybe St Louis will see the business finally take off, and that would be my oh I wish for this year, after healthy happy kids, gratitude in every breath and endless laughter.

Into the light.

December 30, 2015, Caddo Mills (Texas.)

Mostly I worry about money, like an undercurrent I can’t fight.
Yet the deep river of my worries is tinged with light.
Isn’t it the light you see first, out of the shadows in the image drawing your gaze, making you want to smile?
I had to add up the sum of what I earned this year to reapply for health insurance, and it was a sobering and depressing endeavor, topped only by looking at the list of my photography clients.
Building a business takes time, my friends tell me, especially a photo business. Ideally it is done with the backing of a spouse who provides the earnings and the support, moral as well as material, while the investments, the bills and the worries pile up. Here I am, and there may not be a worse way to start a business than the one I went about this year, emotionally bankrupt, financially strained, physically drained. Not surprisingly it’s not working, at least not yet, by far.
So I worry about money. I worry about ever earning enough again to be independent, to raise my kids solo and not have to ask anybody anything, to walk proud, to walk light and beautiful. Then come the holidays and the holidays are hard, there is nothing worse than the holidays, and trying to make the memories sweet and happy for the kids, trying to be a presence of joy and lightheartedness, and his presence/absence in our lives so difficult to bear, and that it’s all ending soon and it’s a relief and it’s so scary.
But I will be strong and I will be joy and with each with one of my breath I will bring my kids light and beauty and laughter no matter what scorching winds the fear rides, and I will defeat it with each act of creation and each act of love and they are the same and it is on the wings of their winds that the world is born into its perfection every moment everywhere.

Gratitude.

December 13, 2015, Columbia (Missouri.)

It is raining and warm outside, and the house is full of colors, the walls red, turquoise blue, bright yellow, the boys’ eyes.
The past week has brought me recognition beyond my expectations and again the love of friends and family pouring in from all over the world, keeping all those colors screaming.
Daily living is still a stressful race against the clock with two kids’ lives I strive to keep as alive and joyful and full of soul-opening opportunities as I can, and three jobs I try to juggle, but I am finally making friends, thanks to a part-time job started this summer at a French-Spanish immersion school, French friends, Puerto Rican friends, American friends, the way I like it, my rainbow of life, the screaming colors, wide open and crazy my life and our friends and the door to my house. Even when it is cold outside I can’t bear to close the front door, leave it open I say, I need the light, the door to the motor home when we were a circus family wide open and my spouse complaining about the cold or the wind or the heat but I would reopen it the instant he was gone, and at the house here it is open wide, because I want to see outside and bring in the light, because I want to see outside and bring in the world.
But I’m lost in my words again and all I wanted to say was that in the maelstrom of our lives I am so happy, and I got to shoot a senior portrait yesterday, too, and giving tribute to that almost grown man’s face was a fitting culmination of my week’s gratitude.