When I look back on photos from my childhood, it is often the incidental things that strike me most. The matching fair isle jumpers we wore circa 1972-1976. The vinyl records pulled onto the floor by my twin sisters, the frilly coloured foil around the edges of the birthday cake.
Today I wanted to capture just exactly how things are, right this very minute before I forget:
Laundry on clothes horses ready to be quickly moved in and out of doors according to the mercurial whims of Melbourne's weather;
Ruby scooting round and round and round the deck, immersed in a private game;
Nina carrying a bucket of sand;
the spoutless silver teapot reduced to a sandpit accessory;
Pablo hoeing into a tomato he has just nicked from the veggie patch;
a rubber washing up glove abandoned by Lily at the back door;
the instructions to Grace's new goggles in six languages, which she blu-tacked to the wall (who knew goggles required instructions?);
the new hooks for school/kinder hats and bags only;
my dependable, endlessly capacious 'Dig Ivan Dig' nappy bag perched on the couch...
This was the view from my kitchen today. Forty years from now I wonder what it will be that strikes us most. Will the scene be oh so familiar, or will it be a lost time capsule from the distant land of early childhood? Will the car have the 'vintage' look of my grandpa's arsenic green 1954 Holden ute that turns up in my childhood photos? Will the painting on the wall be worth a fortune because the local artist made it big? Will that vine finally take over the entire house and garden, enclosing us, like Sleeping Beauty, in a thicket so dense it will not be penetrated for a century? (I sometimes fear so....).
No glamour here, but much that resonates.
What a great post. The best pics from my childhood are ones like this, no one posing just going about their business, so you can really check out what mum had on the bench.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna take more pics like this and actually save them.