Ironically, I was in Port Townsend feeling far from home for the “Close to Home,” workshop led by Stuart Sipahigil, and Ray Ketcham. When my daughter asked if I’d learned a lot in the workshop, I told her “yes, but not in the way that you might think.” “Close to Home,” as Stuart presented it, is a concept, not a recipe. Stuart isn’t interested in teaching anyone how to operate their equipment so as to achieve better photographs, he’s interested in helping photographers see differently; to see their own personal environments as ripe with possibilities for wonderful images.

To that end, he and Ray offered exercises such as plunking each of us in a spot for one hour with the instruction that we were not to move – not even 10 feet. When Stuart pointed at me and then at the bike rack sitting at the edge of the sidewalk in front of the not yet open bookstore on the main road in “downtown”, I looked at him incredulously. Seeing nothing immediately, I asked if I could at least climb on the bike rack (which I did). Anyone who knows me knows that asking me to stand anywhere for one hour is a major challenge.  Of course the bike rack perch yielded more than I could have initially imagined and I actually came up with a couple images that I really like! 

Each of us was also given a personal assignment that we had half a day to work on. I was given the boat harbor – not the harbor in town where visiting tourists moor their pleasure craft, but the working harbor south of town.  I had no idea what to expect there. I arrived early Saturday morning fortified by a large cup of coffee. Four hours of making photographs later, after searching for and trying to effectively represent the “soul” of the place, I desperately needed food. Making my way up the hill to the farmer’s market, I plopped down in the grass in the sunshine with an enormous fresh salmon sandwich for a brief respite, digesting the morning and hoping that the memory cards in my bag held the feeling I had discovered in the harbor. I had so much fun that I think it would be safe to bet that I’ll be found haunting docks in Seattle some time soon to add to that collection of images.

While I spent the days in Port Townsend, I spent nights sleeping in front of a fire in a rough summer shelter/cabin about 45 minutes away with only the mice for company. The cabin sits on a piece of land my family has owned since I was seven. I left there early and returned after dark every evening. I watched the sun turn the Olympics pink in the mornings above a layer of low fog sitting on the mirror smooth water. In the context of “Close to Home”, I saw all of this with different eyes and realized that though nothing there is unfamiliar, it can all be fresh and new every day if I only open my eyes and pay attention. I think Stuart will be happy to know that I ended up, on my last morning, camera in hand, at 7am, lying in the wet sand of the beach.

 
If I had to choose one image from the whole weekend, it would be this one.

One morning, as I drove towards Port Townsend on Center Road for the umpteenth time this year, I was struck by the beauty of the valley and pulled over. I jumped out of my car, imagining the photograph I wanted to make. To my disappointment, I evidently terrified the cows grazing in the foreground of my photograph, and they took off running away from me before I had a chance to press the shutter once. I fired off a few frames anyway because it was a pretty scene, but it wasn’t what I was after. As I turned to walk back to my car, I noticed the cows on the other side of the road with the fog in the trees behind them. Contrary to their pals across the road, they apparently were not afraid of me, as they actually approached the fence separating us. I giggled to myself as I stood there, thinking about how all I needed to do was stop, slow down and pay attention. Though this image was made outside the framework of the workshop, for me it captures the essence of what Stuart was trying to convey.

Returning to Lyon as an adult, I’m always surprised at how much it offers. For the last 20 years one of my Irish cousins and her husband have lived just outside the city, giving me reason to come back on several occasions. Usually, its been a stopover to meet her and her family to head off on some crazy adventure with our combined lot of six children. But this time, with the kids all well on their way to grown, I arrived to spend some time with her, her husband and sister. It had been over 10 years since I’d seen any of them, so we had a lot to catch up on. No grand adventures were planned, just being together.

Mornings usually found us long at the kitchen table munching croissants and drinking coffee regardless of the schemes concocted the night before. Whatever it was seemed to take on less urgency on the heels of yet another 2am bedtime. Some time after noon, we’d all of a sudden realize that the day was escaping and come up with an improvised plan based on how many hours remained until dinner. On one outing into town we checked out an area called “the docks” – previously warehouses along the river - which is being completely redone to house clubs, cutting edge furniture and interior design stores that cater to a hip, young, multi-cultural, international set.

An orange cube building initially caught my attention, but at further inspection, the buildings on either side matched the orange cube with their own innovative but less outrageously colorful elements.

We wandered through the medieval warren, “Vieux Lyon”, with its narrow alleys, covered walkways, and secret passages built to protect bolts of silk, (an industry for which Lyon was known up until some time in the 19th century). Theoretically, we were trying to decide where to eat dinner but got sidetracked by ice cream in a central plaza near the river, which gave us the opportunity to spend more time teasing each other, laughing and telling stories. But this is Lyon, and meals are serious business here, so after wandering and window shopping a little more, we retrieved warmer clothing to ward off the evening chill and launched ourselves into the evening’s next culinary adventure.

Some time since 1979, Lyon became home to a collective of artists who paint giant murals on the walls of the very ordinary urban residential buildings that line the banks of the Rhone and Saône rivers. Now, every other block sports a building or two painted with elaborate trompe l’oeil designs and enormous pictures of life in Lyon. I’d seen a few small, decrepit versions of these in the old part of town, but crossing the river, I looked up, stunned to see the playful, colorful paintings ornamenting the same buildings I had trudged by daily lamenting to myself the dreariness of this town where I’d landed.

After four days of hanging out with cousins, exploring the country lanes near their home as well as the contrasting newer and older parts of Lyon, I headed off on an early morning train to Italy, the second leg of my pilgrimage to reconnect with people I hadn’t seen in too long.

Saying goodbye, we vowed to do this again sooner. It was a new way of being together for all of us. No major plans, no destinations, no need to entertain young children, just hanging out, talking, eating and being. As I’ve said, I’m still learning how to do this thing, and I can’t say that there weren’t moments when I looked at the clock and thought, “Are we going to do anything today?” without an accompanying feeling of anxiety that indeed, we might not! In retrospect, I look back and think how silly that thought was. The idea behind it is that “if I’m all the way over here in France, shouldn’t I be doing something?” And being all the way over here in Seattle, I look at that and think, “how ridiculous.” Those memories of watching the royal wedding at 1am after finishing dinner somewhere close to midnight, sitting at breakfast until after noon and grilling steaks in the back yard are the ones that will stick with me long after I’ve forgotten the images from the cool trompe l’oeil paintings.

Having traveled a fair bit in France and Italy, I have a decent repertoire of memories to draw from. This time, something felt different. It wasn’t until I reflected upon the possibility that I was doing it differently that it all started to make sense.

Jeffrey’s post elicited a landslide of comments. Thoughtful and sensitive, full of depth and very personal, they came from the heart… The original blog post itself was unusual. In it, he was open and vulnerable about personal grief and loss. It was this vulnerability that elicited the ensuing rare conversation, which I found refreshing, exciting and heart-warming.

Waiting for the TGV to Lyon

Flashing back to my experience in France and Italy this spring … What did I do differently this time and how did that affect my travel experience? In retrospect, I must have unintentionally allowed myself to be more vulnerable. When I was younger, I sweated while schlepping gear, bicycles and bags through airports, train and metro stations as if I were some version of Wonder Woman, or trying to set a record for managing awkward burdens. I stood on street corners and turned maps upside down and sideways trying to orient myself. I got frustrated and mad at French bureaucrats and functionaries. I had anxious moments trying figure out public telephones because I didn’t have the right “jeton” or phone card and couldn’t quite figure out the directions, but because I spoke the language, I was too embarrassed to ask for help.

Due in part to lack of forethought, but also, I presume, to a greater willingness to expose myself to the world, I found that this spring, in every situation in which I felt out on a limb, people stepped up to help me or engaged with me in a way that was new and unusual (at least in my experience). While speaking French and Italian has often made it easier to travel there, it also made it easier for me to think I could and should be able to figure things out on my own. Well, its been a long time since I used either my French or Italian, and this year I found myself stumbling over words and trying to remember things that once rolled off my tongue, which was uncomfortable and, I have to admit, a little embarrassing.

Arriving in Lyon, my cousin was incredulous as I described the string of interactions leading from my hotel in Paris to arriving at the train station in Lyon two and a half hours later than scheduled. While France and the French have not always enjoyed the reputation of being the friendliest place to travel, I’ve never found it unfriendly, but his time, I was positively bowled over by the people who reached out to make it easier for me: The French gentlemen; one who carried my rolling duffel up the stairs from the Metro into the Gare de Lyon, and another who tried to help me with my e-ticket because it “gave him a sense of mission while waiting for his train”  (don’t bother with buying train e-tickets for France, they don’t work anyway…), the two who let me cut in front of them in the queue because the e-ticket didn’t work, the SNCF official who assured me that he would take care of me because the e-ticket mess was about to cause me to miss my train, the business woman who had offered me the use of her phone when I couldn’t get the code right on my American Blackberry to call my cousin, then dialed for me to make sure it worked, her friend who got off the train to usher me to the correct coach when he saw me looking at the map on the platform, then lifted my bag onto the train before dashing back to his part of the train just before departure.

Continuing on to see a friend in Italy, followed by meeting up with Jeffrey and five “strangers” for a photography workshop in Croatia, the trend continued.

Sitting in the airport in Seattle, watching a TED talk while waiting for the flight that would take me through Iceland and on to Paris at the beginning of this adventure, I had no thoughts of how what I was hearing would affect the next three weeks. Maybe it did, or maybe I’ve just changed and become more willing to be vulnerable over the last ten years. I’ll never know. But what I do know is that I learned a lot about not being Wonder Woman, about being willing to be less than completely self-sufficient. And as I write those words, I wince… Did I really say that? Am I really willing to give up some of the self-sufficiency I’ve prided myself on for 50 years?

For years, I”ve loaded my tripod into the car next to coolers and shopping bags full of more chips, marshmallows, hot dogs and soda than anyone (or maybe just me) can possibly imagine eating. Alongside sleeping bags, dog beds, dogs and kids, I squeeze my camera and personal belongings into the remaining corners and head off to our family’s rustic shelter on an undeveloped piece of land bordering a pristine bay.

Falling asleep gazing at the myriad stars visible away from the light pollution of the city, and waking to the guttural sounds of ravens and the higher pitched squeak of eagles and their young, I feel replenished and nourished. Ordinarily, I consider this place a bastion of quiet and peace, but once a year, as dictated by tradition, we stop at the reservation en route to buy an arsenal’s worth of explosives from Bennie… and then just hope that the fireworks aren’t faulty, and the kids all have enough sense to let go of them soon enough to avoid blowing off appendages. I can’t say that I love the fireworks, particularly as I get older, but, I remember well the thrill of lighting a fuse, running, and then standing back to marvel at the results. And so, almost in spite of myself, I find a certain pleasure in the annual ritual.

By now I’m the designated photographer. It gives me a reason to get excited about the incendiary festivities. In the years of making photographs of fireworks, I’ve never really hit my stride and found that I’ve got it dialed in, so its an ongoing creative challenge. The fourth of July rolls around and every year I find myself trying out new things; working out some kind of pleasing composition that somehow tells the story of this crazy tradition. The simple explosion in the dark sky, while pretty, has never gotten me jazzed…

This year, the cousins showed up with a new kind of “firework”. I think they called it a lantern. Its my new favorite, by far. Like a miniature hot-air balloon, you light the flame and the paper lantern floats away, illuminating the sky as it soars higher and higher until it disappears. Its completely silent and totally peaceful… nothing to scare the dogs or the wild animals living nearby.

Filed under: Photography, writing Tagged: camera, family, fireworks, food, fourth of july, kids, Photography, tripod ]]> http://camelliablossoms.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/family-4th-of-july/feed/ 0 Camille Sheppard Dohrn Flag over the bay Fireworks on the beach Lantern/hot air balloon fireworks http://camelliablossoms.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/wandering-in-paris/ http://camelliablossoms.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/wandering-in-paris/#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 23:06:12 +0000 Camille Sheppard Dohrn http://camelliablossoms.wordpress.com/?p=1001 ]]> Awakening to rain my last morning in Paris with my feet still tender from miles logged the previous 36 hours meant rethinking how I would spend the time remaining until my late afternoon train to Lyon. So after packing up and stashing my packed bags, a buzzing boulangerie around the corner lured me in with the promise of a cafe creme and a pain aux raisins, which provided an excuse to sit and people watch while writing in my journal. As I sat, I flashed back, “Proustian” fashion, to pleasant memories of this very activity. Usually, it wasn’t a way to get out of the rain and decide what to do next, but an end in and of itself.

I felt my body relax and settle into the corner I had chosen, simply enjoying the flow of tourists and neighborhood residents which seems to be characteristic of the Marais. There are other neighborhoods in Paris that have this same feel, and 33 years after first visiting Paris, I still search out the corners of the city where I can sink in and feel what its like to be a part of this flow rather than apart from it. Its easy to go to Paris, or other five star travelers hot spots, and be so intent on seeing what is there to see that one misses this element entirely. You arrive somewhere with a list of “must see and dos” and proceed to check it off, feeling like you’ve failed the place if you fail to see its Mona Lisa. On the heels of this trip, I realized that it is this element of feeling the spirit of a place that draws me. It’s connecting with shopkeepers, street vendors, waiters, and other travelers as well as witnessing the ebb and flow of ordinary people’s lives that draws me to new places at home as well as to foreign lands. I’m not sure I could have iterated that previously, but having the two contrasting experiences back to back on this trip brought it home.

I knew before arriving in Paris this time that I would not be visiting any museums, but the rain challenged me, since that is actually something one does in Paris in the rain.  Its what I do in many cities in the rain. But this time I had decided that in only two and a half days, I wanted to reconnect with and re-experience whatever that intangible thing is that repeatedly draws me back to Paris like a moth to a flame and I didn’t think I would find it in the museums which dot the city.

Sticking to my wandering theme, I scanned my memory of the neighborhoods within striking distance and recollected what I thought was a daily morning market at Place Monge – and markets are covered by awnings and umbrellas to protect them from the elements. I actually just got lucky, because its not a daily market! It happens on Wednesday, Fridays and Sundays.

If I had to choose one food item that I miss from living in France it would be Fromage de Chevre…
all kinds, but I’m particularly fond of the various small round “crottins” that appear in the inventory of every cheese merchant in France. While photographing at this stall, the woman behind the table asked me if I wanted to buy something. I told her that sadly, I couldn’t, because I was leaving that afternoon, but did she mind if I photographed her wares. We struck up a conversation while I tried to capture the flavors and textures of favorite cheeses with my camera. She must have known, because between customers, she hacked off chunks of Tomme de Savoie and Comte, followed by oozing wedges of soft-ripened goat cheeses.

From Place Monge I wandered down narrow alleyways of the left bank headed toward the Luxembourg gardens until my footsteps led me to the Pantheon. I decided to pay and go in. Wandering among the tombs of Rousseau, Pierre and Marie Curie, Voltaire, and Victor Hugo, my knowledge of French history lead me back in time and I felt Paris’ past all around me. I wondered why I was photographing the tombs of the these famous men… what am I ever going to do with them? Maybe simply the act of capturing that moment, the feeling of being face to face with history… maybe that’s what those photographs are for.

Leaving the Pantheon, I found a place to buy a sandwich and headed to the Luxembourg gardens to claim a chair under clearing skies. While I could skip every museum and monument, I don’t think I could go to Paris without going to the Luxembourg gardens. I have photographs of my children playing with the sailboats in the pond and riding the carousel here and others taken with a french friend in the 80′s when I’d run off to Paris on a vacation from work. When I was 18 and feeling lonely and homesick, the tall green painted iron gates welcomed and beckoned me to come and sit. There, I wasn’t a lonely young American, but just another human being doing the same thing that those around me were doing. Sitting there and eating my sandwich with the time clock ticking on this visit to Paris, I felt that same ease and welcome.

I finished off my tour of the city by taking the metro to the base of Montmartre and walked up to Sacre Coeur among the throngs of tourists for a quick peek at the view before heading back to grab my bags, make my way to the Gare de Lyon and say “au revoir” to Paris – which translates approximately to “until I see you again”.

Note: Instead of posting a dozen or so photographs here for each post, I’m posting all of them on Flickr with just a few that seem relevant here.

Having recently spent 3 weeks traveling, I know that the world doesn’t come to an end when I let go, but translating that into being home AND letting go is a bigger challenge. Being home and making space to pursue what calls me rather than simply falling back into the well-worn ruts of “what I’ve always done”. For the last 20 years, I’ve allowed my children’s “needs” to dictate the pace and parameters of my life. Now its time for that to change. The line a pretzel follows goes first in one direction, then another, overlapping and doubling back upon itself. In then end, a graceful shape is formed… a cohesive whole. If I stop and dwell a while at any of the points upon that line, the whole will not be impacted. The next point will still be there to guide me back toward the center, only to be drawn away and back again. The weave may change, but I don’t have to hold all of the threads anymore.

I write all of this in Seattle after rereading Parisian journal entries and editing more photographs from a month ago.  I smiled to myself noting the remaining mild discomfort of being on my own in Paris, footloose and completely free. I had forgotten that I felt that way on day 2. I wrote that I was having a hard time with the idea of no agenda and that I was feeling the need for some kind of “organizing principle” around which to orient. While my memory, and the photographs, clearly attest to the fact that I had no difficulty wandering here and there as ideas came to me, I was also up against some internal resistance to doing just exactly that.

With no children tugging on my sleeve to tell me they were hungry, different from the last three times I visited Paris, I found it hard to choose when and where I wanted to eat. Due to the exchange rate, Euro to dollar, even a simple restaurant meal lightens the wallet significantly and I found myself thinking like I did when I lived in Paris at 23 and quickly running out of money. I had to convince myself that it was ok to sit down, take some time, order food and wine and enjoy a meal rather than huddling under an awning in the drizzle munching a baguette sandwich of butter and ham. After all, I only had a little over 48 hours before moving on to Lyon. My wandering finally led to a small pizzeria near St. Eustache. It had started to rain in earnest and I needed to regroup. My plan for rain was a bit of a scavenger hunt.

Near the Palais Royal and headed north toward Montmartre, a network of “galeries et passages couverts” have sheltered pedestrians from the elements since the nineteenth century. I decided I would try to find those that I knew about. Some hid themselves and I never did find them, and led me maze-like through an area I thought I knew reasonably well.

As the rain turned to showers and finally stopped altogether, I ventured back out among the tourists near Louvre, criss-crossing the Seine, in and out of the neighborhoods bordering the river. As the day wore on, my discomfort with a lack of agenda disappeared. I repeatedly found myself standing on street corners gawking at gilded domes and intricate capitals of columns that soared above my head. Having lived in Paris, I didn’t expect to be awestruck by the same monuments and architecture that had surrounded me on a daily basis.

Revisiting my memories while writing this, I realize that it was about this time of night when I finally returned to my hotel that night… I still had the better part of the next day to explore before catching a train to Lyon.

When I awaken tomorrow in Seattle, I will be throwing my camera bag back over my shoulder again to Fremont to “embed” myself with the “Giant Puppets Save the World” group in the Solstice Parade and shoot photographs for “Long Shot” the Photo Center Northwest’s 24 hour photography marathon. Paris to Seattle… and then back again to write some more as I move through the back log of unedited photographs.

I like to celebrate birthdays by doing something memorable – some kind of adventure. My recent travels were part of this, but they didn’t include my family. This year, Sunday morning dawned and my previous ideas about what I wanted to do disappeared. Skiing and hiking had been at the top of the list, but instead, I decided I wanted to go on a European style adventure. I wanted to do something that didn’t involve a lot of driving, preparation, organization and provisioning. I wanted to just head out the door and stop somewhere along the way to get food or drinks or whatever. Though I’d never been there, Redhook brewery in Woodinville came to mind. My 14 year old daughter was a little reluctant, having just returned tired from an overnight birthday party, but she rallied. I didn’t think about the fact that she has a crappy old mountain bike and I forgot to check the mileage to the brewery, but had in my mind that it was about 17 miles.

Two and a half hours later, with both kids suffering from dangerously low blood sugar, we arrived at Redhook. It was a beautiful day and I kept trying to convince them, that it was about the ride, not just about getting somewhere. And truthfully, I kept trying to convince myself that if we didn’t make it, I wouldn’t be disappointed. But because my daughter is a trooper, and an incredibly good sport, we did make it – crappy old mountain bike and all. We lounged on the grass in the sunshine while we waited for a table, and ate outside. Eating outside in the sun, is a rarity on June 12 of any year, and this year, with the lousy spring we’ve had, I felt like it was an additional gift.

As we rode home, I mused about what a perfect way it was to celebrate this birthday. In many ways it was just a normal day. No party, no fanfare… But it exemplified the way that I want to live. I want to think of every day as an adventure. And head off into it without worrying whether I’m fully prepared or provisioned because that takes way too much thinking and planning and then half of the time you don’t go because its too much work. Had I realized that riding to Redhook meant a 42+ mile odyssey, I’m pretty sure I would have come up with a plan B… and I’m pretty sure I would have at least taken a windbreaker and suggested the kids do the same. By the time we reached the University of Washington, we were riding into raging headwind, so I suggested to the dad and brother that they go ahead and get a car so that Gillian wouldn’t have to ride the last mile all up hill. By the Montlake Bridge, with a good 30 minutes left to ride, it started to rain. The car arrived just as we started up the last set of hills or I might have gotten the bad mommy award on my 50th birthday. At home, we checked Google Maps and discovered how far we’d ridden. I felt a little sheepish about the miscalculation and apologized to my daughter for my oversight. She’s still incredulous that she rode that far and I’m more than a little proud of her.

So I got my adventure, and I got to do it with my kids, minus the oldest who wrote this post from her own adventure in Brazil: http://cldohrn.blogspot.com/2011/06/blessings-and-birthday-wishes.html. I don’t think I feel any different than I did on Saturday evening except a few sore shoulder and neck muscles from spending many hours on a bicycle… I know… its the same every year, but 50 was messing with me!

In truth, my 365 day project ran out of gas. It might have been different if the volcano had stayed quiet. I was scheduled to fly to Paris on April 18, ultimately making my way to Genoa for an inspiring and challenging week long photography workshop with David DuChemin and Jeffrey Chapman. But I stayed in Seattle. I spent a week with a packed suitcase in the middle of the floor. My morning routine involved drinking a latte with a phone to my ear, trying to find a flight from the west coast of the United States to anywhere in Europe that was operating and wasn’t oversold. It didn’t happen. I finally threw in the towel and called in my travel insurance. A couple months later, CSA sent a check for everything I had spent that wasn’t reimbursed by the airline. In the mean time, I stopped writing daily blog posts and confined my disappointment to the pages of a moleskine. While I appreciated the Seattle’s beauty walking through the Arboretum and along Lake Washington, and I tried really hard to recognize that there is a time and place for everything, I was having a really difficult time finding my daily routine as inspiring as France and Italy.

It took a few days before I was ready to start unpacking that suitcase. I carefully placed the bag with gifts for family and friends on a shelf in my bedroom, not knowing when I would deliver them, but vowing to doing so. The suitcase went back to the storage room in the basement.

Fast forward one year: A rolling duffel bag sat on the floor with piles of clothing and camera gear all around it for a week as I decided what was going and what was staying. I finally took the bag of gifts off the shelf, made a nest for it among my clothes, zipped and locked the bag. The heavy pack containing laptop, external hard drive, camera, lenses and other critical items went on my back.

As I boarded the plane in Seattle, I had to pinch myself. After a year of waiting, dreaming, planning, and visualizing, the trip was happening. This year, I added a few more days so that I could hang out with cousins in Lyon and a good friend outside Milan. The other thing that changed was that the photography workshop was in Croatia… on a sailboat.

I’m planning to add photos as I edit, and write about whatever seems relevant as I go through the images. While traveling this spring, I found that I had a lot to think about and reflect on in my journal about travel, culture, my family and friends. Of course the “trip” became a journey that is still revealing itself as I now reflect back on it.  The images below are from my first afternoon and evening in Paris.

It had been 11 years since I was last there. When I made plans to spend a couple days alone in Paris before heading south to Lyon to stay with cousins, I was thinking about it the way I always had… as a city where I am completely at ease because I lived there and speak the language. Arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport, it occurred to me that I last lived there over 25 years ago and I don’t use my french all that often. Asking for directions to the Air France bus, the sounds did not roll off my tongue the way they used to, and I stumbled over a few simple words and phrases. It would be easy blame it on the fact that I was exhausted from flying and jet-lagged, but the reality – that it had been a very long time – quickly became apparent when I decided to walk from the Gare de Lyon to my hotel in the Marais, forgetting that I didn’t have a map! Even when I lived in Paris, I always carried a handy street map. The friendly driver on the Air France bus had confirmed that it wasn’t far, but of course I made a couple of wrong turns, and a 15 minute walk quickly became about 30 minutes on a 70+ degree afternoon with a heavy pack on my back and duffel bag bumping over the curbs and cobbles behind me. Without a map, I was forced to ask strangers for directions several times, which gave me at least a start at working a few of the kinks out of my rusty French.  Though sweating and exhausted, every footstep felt lighter with the exhilaration of walking down the Rue de Rivoli by myself, in Paris!

Under normal circumstances (normal?), I probably would have taken my time, unpacked a bit and had a nap or a cup of coffee, but the weather forecast predicted an end to the sunshine so I quickly regrouped, and headed back out onto the street (this time armed with a map). A few blocks away is the Place des Vosges, a small grassy square that I used to walk out of my way to sit in when I lived in Paris. I plopped down on the grass, pulled out a bottle of water and took it all in. My whole reason for coming to Paris on this trip was to reacquaint myself with a city that I have loved for a long time. I had no plan but to wander as I was moved, and as my camera led. By 9pm my stomach led me to a small bistro called Le Coude Fou. As I sat, the fatigue crept up on me. Between a couple glasses of wine, a full stomach and many hours since my head had last rested on a pillow, I could no longer deny the fact that I had to say good night to Paris and return to my tiny room, reassuring myself that it would all still be there when I awakened the next day.

Some parents would never consider blogging about their kids

If you didn’t catch the beginning of our blog-versation, and you’re just “tuning in” now. Here’s what’s up:  Alle (link to her blog) and I are having a “healthy, respectful debate” about the virtue or vice of writing/blogging about one’s children. It started a month ago or so when I saw a post she wrote on this topic.

I have to admit that its kind of weird to see something written about me, my blogging and my parenting! And, I want to immediately express my gratitude to Alle for her kind comments about the latter.

When Alle and I were discussing this idea, I told her that my biggest concern was not about which one of us was right or wrong, and how we could have a “healthy, respectful debate”, but that our opinions, while seemingly divergent, might actually be too close together for it to be considered a debate. That said, I still disagree with her that writing about one’s children is a bad idea – depending on the context of that writing.

First of all, its important to note a relevant difference in parenting context between the two protagonists in this story. Alle’s children are pre-school and elementary ages. Mine are junior high, high school and college. When my kids were the ages of hers, the last thing I would have wanted to write about was my kids. I felt like my life had been consumed with parenting. At that time, people asked me why I didn’t use my background teaching french to teach it to children. I tried, briefly. Basically, I wanted to think about and do something other than be with young children, anything. I wanted to feel like I had a life other than them. Now that they are on their way “out of the nest”, I can think about parenting a little more objectively.

In her most recent post, Alle suggests that writing about my children means that I haven’t thought it through from their perspective. This is both true and not. In that statement lies the peril of writing about one’s children. I TRY to always think things through from their perspective. But, Alle makes a very good point. I haven’t thought it through from their perspective because I can’t! Its one of those fundamental truths. One can never think from another’s perspective. All I can do is try to imagine what their perspective is, and regarding the writing about them, how they would feel if they read what I wrote. That I do.

I write about my children as a part of my experiment to write directly, as closely as possible, from inside the experience of being a parent to my three kids. I decided to do this blog experiment publicly after talking to enough women who struggled, as I did, with the question “What do you do?” I didn’t know how prevalent the angst was among mothers my age until I started talking about it, so I decided to dive right into the question, explore it, wrestle it from the inside, and somehow make peace with it before the experience of being a stay-at-home mom was over. I figured that the daily exercise of photographing and writing about my own experience would yield an appreciation of its vicissitudes.

I couldn’t do this experiment without referencing my children, and writing, to a certain extent, about them. The real topic of this blog, however, is not my children, but my effort to understand the un-ease that often accompanies the role of the stay-at-home mom in light of my own experience.

I think the question that Alle poses is extremely relevant to my thesis. Alle writes: “Parents exist to meet the needs of their children, not the other way around.” I agree, and to the extent that my blog or anything I write makes my children uncomfortable, or in any way impinges on their lives, I am out of line. I am exploiting them for my own purposes.

If the blog itself becomes my answer to the question “What do I do?” Or, in other words, if I use it to make me important because I feel irrelevant as a stay-at-home mom, then I still haven’t wrestled with the demon that lies beneath it. I believe that it is this same demon that lies beneath the question Alle poses. Are we using our children to feel better about feeling irrelevant? If we write about our children, are we appropriating our children’s lives to feel better about the lack of value we perceive in our own? (In other posts, I delve deeply into the question of how we ascribe value in our culture, and how it negatively impacts the self-esteem of many women – particularly stay-at-home moms. You can look them up under the tag “value”)

When I write about my children, I ask myself these questions before I post: Why? To what end? Are you writing to make yourself feel important? If I write about witnessing my son score a goal in his soccer game, am I writing that because it taught me something about being a parent (the joy of watching your child succeed) or because I can parasitically usurp some of that success?  Can I be as present to my child in their struggles and see what they teach me about myself and parenting as when they succeed? Can I write about that experience with as much honesty and curiosity as I do about the successes?

If I catch myself feeling “special” due to something one of them has done, I now quickly look over my shoulder to see if anyone has caught me patching up a hole in my own self image with a bit stolen from one of my children instead of doing my own work.

Back to you Alle… or to you, “loyal and faithful” readers…

Making a Statement - the rooster at Clean Greens farm showing off his plumage

Bear with me for a moment… As I sit here typing this instead of cleaning up the mess in the other room and downstairs, it is approximately 4:30pm in Lodi, Italy. A week ago, I had my daughter’s bedroom floor covered with my packing mess. Its still there.

This morning I couldn’t help saying, “a week ago, I thought I’d be on my way to my friend’s home in the countryside outside Milan to have dinner and spend the night tonight, and instead I get to clean my house. That’s a lousy trade.” My daughter informed me that if I spend my time thinking about what I thought I’d be doing every day instead of what I am doing, its just going to bum me out. She’s right, and, to a certain extent, I can’t help it. I spent six months gearing up and planning for this adventure.

I’ve actually never traveled with an entire trip mapped out. The only piece that remained was a short jaunt from a small town in Liguria back to Milan to catch a plane home. Most often, I’ve taken off with a hotel reservation or a place to stay on night number one, and left the rest up to whatever the spirit moved me to do. Not this time… and now I’m sitting here. I’ve already missed a day in Paris, the train to Lyon, a stay with my Irish cousin, and a train ride to Milan. Tonight (a couple of hours from now) it was to be hanging out with a French friend I haven’t seen in nine years, and tomorrow she was going to drop me off at my hotel in Genoa for the photography workshop around which the whole adventure was planned.

As I said this morning, “I just can’t believe I’m here, driving to Capitol Hill instead of in Italy. I’m incredulous”. Of course my daughter didn’t understand the difference between being in shock about it and complaining, and thought I was complaining about driving her to school.

Actually, because I didn’t expect to be here this week, I have been surprised and appreciative every day of moments that I would have missed had I been gone. Phone calls, soccer goals, prom date “asking” adventures, a morning shooting at the farm, a walk with a friend, baby animals, and sunshine. (More on the farm and the baby animals later…) Time has seemed somewhat irrelevant because I was never going to be here. In some ways, its been as if someone handed me a new calendar for this period time and added a week to it. I get a phone call asking if I can do something, and have to think for a minute about what might conflict, then realize that the only possible conflicts are things I’ve ginned up in the past few hours.

Every morning begins with a cup of coffee and a phone call to the Alaska Airlines partner desk where some new reservation agent futilely tries every city in Canada, the USA and Mexico from which British Airlines has a flight to Europe. Nothing. Not one seat all week. They would give me any coach seat. I still can’t believe it. Its so incredibly beyond my control that all I can do is sit here and feel stunned. There are no “if only’s”. I didn’t do anything that I wish I hadn’t done that might have caused it. I believe in personal power, but I don’t think I can affect a volcano in Iceland. Who would ever imagine that an eruption of ash would throw a wrench into six months of anticipation and planning. I will probably call a couple more times today, just because…

Basically, I’m about ready to throw in the towel. The ridges on the outside of my left ear are sore from having a phone pressed to them for long periods of time. I’ve memorized the Alaska Airlines partner desk’s automated greeting in both English and Spanish. I know that when it asks you for your mileage plan number you don’t actually have to punch it in. If you do nothing it will still put you in the queue. A couple of moments later the same voice will tell you that you have approximately 12 minutes before your call will be answered.

One of the lovely surprises has been those agents this week. Every single one that I’ve talked to, and that would be at least two per day since Sunday, has been helpful, friendly and sympathetic. One wanted so badly to help me that she actually booked me on two different flights in the course of a morning that didn’t work. That was a big bummer because for about five minutes I was super excited and sent an email to my friend telling her I had just got a ticket and was coming. Then they called me back and said “Oops!”.

So, I guess I’d better go clean up my packing mess in the other room. Maybe if I put it all away, a seat will magically appear on this afternoon’s flight to London…