Photo credit: Jo Charron
I started this blog in January of 2010 as both a 365 day photo project and a place to discuss a question which had bothered me for a long time. The title was “What do you do? The question that makes stay-at-home moms squirm”. Below is the text of my About Me statement at that time:
“My name is Camille, but I go by Cami. I have 3 kids, ages 13, 16, and 19. They will undoubtedly appear in this blog because my life has revolved around theirs for the last nineteen years. In the course of this “career” I have wrestled with the idea of being a stay-at-home mom more than I have been at peace with it. I have watched other women in my peer group do the same, more or less gracefully. In my own journey, I have sometimes tried to live two lives because I chose to stay home and raise my kids, and at the same time often found that this choice left me feeling like I had given up my identity, left me no room for dreams, and confined me to an existence lacking imagination. To counter this perception, I built a creative life that has tried to survive alongside and in the small spaces carved out and stolen from the the 24/7 job of the stay-at-home mom. Being only one person while trying to live two lives takes a toll on both. Recently, the two parts of me have begun a dialogue… a negotiation. Its not an easy conversation. One pushes up against the other, but both have become critical, and neither will back down. As my children grow older, I realize more and more the richness of the years spent raising them. I also have more time to do my creative work. At this moment in time, I can see the overlapping of the two parts of my life as a gift. I have the opportunity now to use my writing and photography in service of the life that I chose 19 years ago. In doing so, I honor each moment, both past and present. When I photograph the mundane… the everyday things that happen in kitchens all over the world, I mark the passage of that moment through eternity. Each one of those moments matter. We honor births, deaths, and anniversaries of all kinds with photographs and words. This blog is about finding and capturing the moments that we often think of as boring and uninteresting and revealing them to be anything but.
This blog is an experiment, an exploration and an adventure – just like life.”
Well, it was an ambitious project, and it almost ate me alive. After about 4 months, I stopped writing in this space. The questions I wrestled with created lengthy posts of convoluted thinking and reasoning that often kept me writing deep into the night. It was exhausting! Between creating a daily photograph that in some way I found relevant and the writing, I had given myself a part-time job that I hadn’t made time for in my life. So… I quit. And then I wrestled with quitting on a commitment I’d made to myself.
In the mean time, I found myself doing more photography and my kids had gotten old enough that I felt like I couldn’t really speak to the “stay-at-home mom” role as well any more. I was becoming more of a work-at-home mom. And I’d pretty well defeated and banished the demons behind that original blog-title.
Now, a year and a half later, I feel like I have something to write about again that is fit for other than my personal consumption. Maybe its because I will be 50 in a few days, or maybe I finally see what I have to say as valuable, but I feel like the reflections I often write for my personal use are interesting. Having just returned from a journey that included visiting friends and family as well as photography in France, Italy and Croatia, I sense that there are all kinds of thoughts burbling up that need a home in words – and there are images to accompany them. So I’ve decided to revive and revise the blog – under a slightly changed title.
I not only got married late, I didn’t have children. I’ve watched my sister and friends’ children growing up and I get misty eyed. You chose well Cami. No one at the end of their life says they wished they had spent more time at work. No, they wish they had spent more time with their family which is exactly what you’ve done. That’s wonderful! No regrets and now you’re documenting it. I wish I had such musings from Dad. He’s passed on now and all that’s left are pictures and treasured letters he wrote when I went away for school and work. You’re creating a great gift and legacy for your kids. I love the way you write too. I look forward to future entries.
Dear Cami,
I just felt compelled to leave a comment here, because the way you expressed yourself in this intro touched me with deep sincerity. I don’t know you – yet – but I am surely looking forward to the trip to Italy with IWTF and you on board…
Anna,
Thanks for reading my blog. Such a surprise to find your comment this morning. I wondered what would happen if I posted that link on Facebook. Its very much an adventure that I still feel a little odd about to be writing all of this and posting it where anyone can see. Sometimes it feels a little like reality TV, but I’m really hoping to create an honest and authentic conversation about what is value and how do we determine that, both individually and culturally. I am still discovering what it is that I am actually writing about because its a little elusive and every comment made by someone else helps clarify the subject. I’m looking forward to meeting you too!
Cami,
I know the feeling – these things are relatively new to me as well, and sometimes they seem almost creepy to openly give yourself on subjects that are of real value to you… however, if done in wisdom and love, I believe it creates new value to others – and that is quest I am on, too
Anna, I am grateful for your presence in this conversation ~ On with the quest!
Cami — What a great experiment! I love the way you’ve carved out your agenda. The perfect set-up for a great story that will resonate with many a’ mother (and nonmother too). And based on your early blog entries, it is evident already that you will execute masterfully!
I have a hunch that this enterprise will propel forward Cami-the-Creator in fabulous, maybe unexpected, ways. Eg 365 day Blog — book — film starring Meryl Streep!
Final note, I really like the moon-light angle — with the nascent PHOTOGRAPHER/WRITER mom in ascendence (especially viz. the public persona), as the daily demands on the photographer/writer MOM diminish.
And with this comment, and against an (imagined) backdrop of violins (think Fiddler on the Roof), I’m launching into the song “Sunrise, sunset.” This melody hums through my head constantly as I watch my own kids grow up, and now it pops into my head as I witness a moment of Cami’s up-growing! Moons and moms, and Suns and sons — it all feels very cosmic.
I’m excited to watch Cami blossom!
Your camadre,
Liz
Hey Liz !
Well I guess you’ve set the bar pretty high for me. How am I ever going to live up to that scenario! Thanks for the comment – and for all the images that accompany it – particularly the last bit about the sun and the moon and all. Funny that the last photograph I posted yesterday was the sunset…
Advice to Myself
Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
Don’t even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don’t even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
by Louise Erdrich