family photos

Without kids, what pictures go in the album?

Sue Fagalde Lick family photos, photos of children and grandchildren , , , , , ,

Daughters Day. Son’s Day. Last week, social media was loaded with photos of people celebrating their children. As if Mother’s Day and Father’s Day weren’t bad enough. I had to look away.
It’s not just hard on childless people. What about those who have kids but not of that gender? Or worse, whose children have died or whom they never see?
I understand why parents take and post lots of kid pictures. It’s the same thing that makes me focus my camera on my dog all the time. They’re cute. They’re ours. We’re proud of them. We want to show them off. We want to mark the milestones and the changes as they get older. I get it. I just can’t look at it too much before I start feeling sad.

Big yellow dog with white face seen in profile in passenger seat of a car in front of the vet's office.

Photography has changed drastically since I was young, back in the days when people picked up their photos at the pharmacy or photo store, showed them to their friends, then put them in albums, labeling each picture with names and dates.

My dental hygienist, whose life revolves around her kids, said no one does photo albums anymore. True? I hardly ever print out my photos. I stopped doing albums ages ago. My pictures are not even well-organized on my phone and my computer. No one looks at them but me.

Do people still display family photos in their houses? If I had kids and grandkids, I suppose I’d have their pictures all over the place. Instead, I have paintings, knick-knacks, wall hangings, and pictures of relatives who are no longer alive.

I do have a growing accumulation of photos of my great nieces and nephew on my computer, but that’s where they stay.

For generations, my family collected photos and put them in albums. I have inherited pictures from my parents and grandparents, most of them attached to black pages with white or gold stickers slipped over the corners. They’re falling apart. I also have my modern color photos on sticky pages. Those are fading. I have scanned some of the most precious photos to share online because that’s the only place I share pictures these days.

I don’t know where my photos will go when I die. Honestly, I don’t think anyone in my family will want them. But what a tragedy to throw them away. It’s like throwing away a life.

What to do with the photo albums and other family heirlooms is one of the sticky things about not having children. If we had children, I’ll bet we would still be preserving their photos in some way, whether in a traditional album, a Facebook memory book, or a fancy scrapbook. We’d be making virtual slide shows and videos. We’d want to save all those memories and pass them down. But without children, is there any point in doing it?

When my husband died, I mailed lots of family photos to his brother and his kids. But I still have many pictures of precious times I spent with him, including those days when I felt like kind of a mom with his children around. I’m keeping those pictures for me.

Life is so transitory these days. You take a picture, post it online, get some likes and comments, and move on. Is that just the way it is now? Should I stop living in the past? Does it matter that Facebook and Instagram are bound to disappear as technology changes?

What about you? Do the happy family photos online bother you? Do you save your photos in albums or hang them on the wall? Most of my pictures are scenery, dogs, or selfies. Without kids, what do you photograph? Do you have a photo collection? Where will it go when you’re gone?

I look forward to your comments.

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Old photos show the family life I could have had

Sue Fagalde Lick childless stepmothers, family photos, old photographs, photos of children and grandchildren, step-grandmother , , , , , , , ,

Back in the 80s being “Grandma Sue” with Stephanie while baby Brandon snoozes. What are we looking at? I don’t remember.

You know how you move one thing in the house and then you have to move something else to make room for it, and pretty soon you have all this stuff that needs a new home and then you sit down in the middle of the mess to sort through old photos? Yeah. That’s what I was doing last night.  

I’m trying to thin out my possessions, so there was a point in sorting through packets of photos from the 70, 80s, and 90s that I never put into albums. They were all pre-digital, taken with cameras that used film.

I was rearranging my stuff because I didn’t feel like writing. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I got some bad news from the vet the other day about Annie–that bump on her butt isn’t just a bump. It’s cancer, and there’s a problem with her heart, too.

We don’t have a lot of details yet, but I have been in near-constant caregiver mode with this dog since she almost died right after Christmas 2020, and now it’s getting bad again. As she wanders around with the big e-collar, running into everything and leaving blood wherever she sits, she interrupts my sleep, my meals, and my work. Crash, boom, Mom! Oh, wait, I’m not her mom, but I do call myself that. Don’t tell anyone. So, there’s that, and I’ve had a cold, and the weather here has been one disaster after another. We have had floods, snow, landslides, hurricane-force winds, and now there’s another flood watch. I’m ready to get in my car and drive to Arizona. 

Back to the old photos. I found quite a few that I could throw away, bland scenery shots, an endless stream of ocean photos, flowers, somebody’s cat. When I took them, I thought they were artistic, but the ones I want to keep are the ones with people in them, especially family. I had a family once upon a time. I had my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, my brother and his wife and kids, and my husband, his parents, his kids and his grandkids. For a while, they were my kids and grandkids, too. The difference between me and friends my age is that their family photos go on as the babies keep coming while mine stopped around the time I switched to digital photos.

What happened? People died, lots of people died. But also, we moved to Oregon, 700 miles away from all but one of Fred’s kids. Plus, my sweet husband put out zero effort to keep in touch. It was always me saying, “Hey, it’s Michael’s birthday. We should call him.” or “Hey, what shall we get the grandkids for Christmas?” Beyond things like gifts and cards, I didn’t know how to go about getting close to the step-family. But I look at these photos of these gorgeous human beings and I remember days when I thanked Fred for giving me a family. If we hadn’t moved to Oregon, if we had tried harder, would they still be in my life now that he is gone? Maybe. Maybe not. I feel like I flunked step-parenting.

When you have your own children, the connection is made by biology. Even if you don’t get along, they are always your children. As the older generation passes on to the next life, there’s another group of young people coming up to fill the hole they leave behind. A person my age shouldn’t be sitting on the hearth looking at old pictures with no one for company but a deaf dog with a cone on her head.

Did I make two huge mistakes in my life, committing to a life without children of my own and moving away from the family I had, or is this the way it was meant to be? Life in Oregon has been good. I have had experiences and made friends I wouldn’t have had if we had stayed in San Jose doing the same things forever. We make choices, and then we have to live with them.

I had fun looking at the pictures. I see in the old ones that I was pretty in my 20s, 30s and even 40s–and a lot skinnier. I need to go on a diet! But I’m glad I have these photos, every one of them attached to a memory, a time I enjoyed with our combined families. It just ended too soon.

Working as a reporter at the Milpitas Post in California in the 1970s

What will happen to these pictures when I die? They’ll probably end up in a dumpster, but I have them to enjoy now, and that matters. 

You know that old Crosby, Stills & Nash song “Love the One You’re With?” Maybe that’s the key. Whatever family you have around, in-laws, stepchildren, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, whatever, treasure them. Love them. They will not be perfect. But they’re yours, at least for now. As you go into a new year, think about what you always wanted to be when you grew up. Was it a mom or dad or was that just an assumed detour from what you really wanted? What photos do you want to be looking at when you’re looking 70 in the face like me?

BTW, I love this photo of me at one of my first newspaper jobs. I was HAPPY. Perhaps that was a clue to where I was headed all along. I loved mothering my dolls when I was a kid, but my Barbie was always going to be a writer or a singer. I never considered making her a mom. Go figure.  

Happy New Year. Forgive me for being a little nuts. As always, your comments are welcome.  

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Pictures of Kids? Not So Much

Sue Fagalde Lick family photos, photos of children and grandchildren, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , ,

We sat around a table at the senior center last week passing around photos for a writing exercise. I was a stranger in this group that meets every week. I had come to check out the visiting writing teacher. My seat faced a wall-sized mirror, so I was looking at myself all the time, feeling too young and overdressed for this group.

The people were incredibly friendly, but I soon felt like an outcast in another way: Most of the photos included children. Kids lined up along a fence. Kids posing at Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa. Kids in the front row of family reunion pictures. You know the kind, where the original couple is surrounded by the many generations. Yeah. I don’t have a lot of those pictures. My albums are full of dogs, cats, buildings, beaches, mountains, and flowers.

The picture I brought, which inspired some smiles, showed my first husband, my father and my brother all leaning down looking into the back of the VW bus that we took on our first honeymoon. That was in 1974, when I was 22 and had no doubts about being a mom someday, and no clue that the marriage wouldn’t last. The honeymoon, a road trip all over the western U.S. and Canada, was great. At home, we didn’t do so well.

But back to the pictures. I suspect most of us don’t keep actual printed photo albums anymore. I don’t, although I have quite a few from the past. We store pictures on our phones, tablets and computers and post them on social media, but it’s still the same. My friends show me pictures of their children and grandchildren. I show them pictures of my dog or the weird bear statue somebody draped in garlands this Christmas (Bondage Bear, I called him). I have some pictures of my nieces and nephews, but I don’t see them often, and it’s not the same.  I take a lot of pictures to accompany my blogs and other writing projects. But I’ll never line my children up on the front porch for the annual first-day-of-school photo. Or pose with their kids at Christmas.

What does that leave me to share or to save in albums? And who would I save those albums for? When I die, who is going to care?

I rarely get my own picture taken. Most of the pics I put online are selfies or photos I paid a professional to take. No one seems anxious to save my image or put it on the wall like the 1800s picture of my great-grandma Louise that I study at my dad’s house, looking for features that have been passed down, trying to sense the kind of person she was. Does anyone believe all those Facebook pictures will even exist in a hundred years? (remember floppy disks? Gone!)

I have been thinking about piecing together a family-tree style collection of photos of all my loved ones, especially those who have died, so I can look at them all in one place. The tree will not go on beyond me. My line goes only backward, not forward. I’m a twig that will never reproduce. So who would I do it for? Me. It would make me happy, and that’s good enough.

My brother, the only person with exactly the same ancestors, might be interested, but he is surrounded by children and grandchildren these days. His branch of the tree is getting heavy with new branches.

Back to that photo I passed around. The seniors got a laugh at the old VW with its “lawnmower” engine in the back. My ex, shirtless, squatted in front of the engine. He was the real mechanic in the group, but my father, still dressed up from the wedding, was bent over supervising while my brother, back in jeans and tee shirt, stood back, looking worried. It was his bus that we were about to drive all over hell and gone with “Just Married” painted in blue all over it and only three working cylinders. I could write a lot more about that picture than I could about yet another string of blonde, blue-eyed Oregon kids.

So what do you take pictures of? Do you put them in albums or other kinds of collections? Who will care about them when you’re gone? Does it matter? Please share in the comments.

 

 

 

 

 

Photographer assumes we all have kids

Sue Fagalde Lick church photos, family photos, Uncategorized , , , , , ,

The young photographer was bent on selling me a package of photos. I kept saying no. I was only getting my picture taken so that my face would appear in the new church directory. I had no need for an expensive package of 8x10s and 5x7s. Never mind that I was horrified at how I looked in the photos. So wrinkly, my smile so fake, the poses so unnatural.

“Don’t you want to give them to your children and grandchildren?” asked this 20-something fellow with the dark ponytail.

“I don’t have any,” I said.

He sat back, his eyes wide. “Oh!” he said.

Apparently it never occurred to him that someone my age might not have oodles of offspring. If my pictures had turned out well, I might have bought some to use as author photos for my books and blogs. The photographer probably never realized I did anything besides mothering.

It’s one of those things people who are not in our situation don’t think about.

I don’t get my photo taken very often. I’m alone a lot. Not a single picture of me was shot at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Most of the pictures I post on Facebook are selfies—and I’m terrible at them.

Once my own church picture was done, I took over at the hostess table, signing people in. My friend Georgia, who has a bunch of offspring, didn’t buy any pictures either. She didn’t like how she looked. On the other hand, a couple from our choir bought lots of pictures to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Some folks brought their whole families, including kids and dogs.

Between arrivals, I had lots of time look around. One of the photographer’s flyers said: “Seniors: Don’t forget photographs for your children and grandchildren.”

Ahem.

I picked the least obnoxious shots for the church directory, pulled off my scarf and my earrings and thanked God it was over.

Ages ago, when my youngest stepson had just moved in with us, my husband’s job offered a family photo deal, so we dressed up and posed in the spotlight. The photographer kept calling me “Mom.” None of my stepchildren called me that. I barely knew the child who was now living with us, and I was really hurting over the fact that I might never have children of my own. I finally told him to knock it off. My name was Sue, not Mom.

We looked good in the photos, but “Mom” looked slightly annoyed. The guy probably called all the women Mom so he wouldn’t have to learn their names. He didn’t know how much that word can sting for those of us who want children and don’t have them.

What are your childless photo experiences?

***

Thank you for your wonderful responses to my questions in last week’s post about what you’d like to see here. Most want stories about people who have overcome their grief and led happy lives without children. I will be on the lookout for those. Keep the comments and suggestions coming.

***

I’m preparing to publish my next book, Up Beaver Creek, a novel set here on the Oregon coast. PD, the main character, is childless. After her husband dies, she is starting over with a new name, a new look, and a new location. Things keep going wrong, but she is determined to keep trying. Then the tsunami comes. You can read an excerpt here. 

 

Is That What I was Supposed to Do?

Sue Fagalde Lick family photos

I received a CD-rom from my cousins yesterday. It contained more than 1,300 family photos. The note promised pictures from several weddings, including my own, major birthday parties for family members, showers, holidays and more. Oh boy, I thought, eager to relive the old days with so many loved ones who have passed away.

There was some of that, but most of the pictures were of my cousins and their kids. Three cousins, five kids, three spouses of the kids at every age from newborn to young adult. So many group photos. Moms pregnant, moms at baby showers, moms holding their babies, moms, dads and grandparents with tiny gap-toothed kids of varying heights. The passing generations of parents to children to their children. Soon these young adults will be having their own offspring, and the cyle will go on with baby pictures, first communions, graduations, weddings, and more baby pictures. Of course the people who took the pictures, cousins whom I treasure even though I rarely see them, would focus mostly on their own families. My own photo albums have pictures of my family, although lately I haven’t taken very many.

These days, my photos tend to be of old barns, flowers, bridges, trees, and dogs. If I had children, I suppose I’d be snapping photos of them incessantly and proudly foisting them on relatives who would display them on their pianos, end tables and bookshelves. But I don’t have that kind of photos. A few stepchild photos here and there, but not many.

I did find some wonderful shots on the CD-rom of my grandmother, my mother and aunts and uncles who have passed away. There were a couple from my wedding and some that showed me the way I used to look. So young! I will save these pictures and love them. But the generations stop with me. I don’t fit into the family picture the way my cousins do. I’m different. It makes me sad.

Do you know what I mean? Do you feel that way sometimes? Like the one looking on from afar?