Through a Lens Brightly

My last conversation with my grandfather was a production call. Picture me on my cellphone, pacing my garden in Venice, California, toddler on hip. Picture him (whom we called "Gar"), in his assisted living apartment in Essex, Connecticut. I briefed him on our 2 options: Cheap($600)= projecting the films at a wall to be videotaped and burned onto DVDs. Expensive ($2400)= a "telecine" transfer and shot-by-shot color-correction by a skilled technician. You know which one Oliver Stone would have picked. Gar would have no less for his version of history.

Gar was not a filmmaker. He made his long and successful career in insurance. But he was a notorious shutterbug and archivist. In retirement, he made an album for each year in the life of the family. The winter before he died, he asked me to help with a project. In selling their home to move into their assisted living apartment, my grandparents unearthed their disintegrating 8mm family movies. Would I help him transfer them to a more permanent format? I was finishing film school in LA and had contacts who could do the high-end transfer at a cut-rate.

Thus, with the Disney studios next door in the San Fernando Valley, do I owe my punk telecine operator Kevin for revealing the true magic of movies to me. My grandfather's first film dated to 1941, just a year after their marriage, and features my grandparents as newly weds visiting Hanover, New Hampshire for "Green Key Weekend" at Dartmouth College. It was faded and scratched, a visual distance to match the temporal. But in Kevin's skilled hands, my gorgeous 24-year old grandparents (younger that I was by this time) were suddenly bright and unmarred by time, walking the streets of what would become my own hometown. Smiling coquettishly to camera, my grandmother Memar's newlywed adoration for the camera operator made my own heart skip. In 6 hours of footage my grandfather himself appears in less than 30 minutes, and yet he is everywhere, deciding what will be framed and in what spirit... The family dressed to the nines for Easter. Kids running the waves of the Long Island sound. The Big One caught in Card Sound off Key Largo, Florida. Mule rides in the Grand Canyon. The last film was shot in 1964. Gar was in fact, if not in title, a filmmaker to rival Frank Capra. Through his hopeful eyes, it was indeed A Wonderful Life.

When my mother got wind of our project, she asked to throw our Davidson family movies into the batch for transfer. In contrast to my grandfather's footage, which I was eager to see, the prospect of my mother's made me anxious. Hers pick up in 1966 and end in 1974. In other words, I would have a glimpse into life B.D. and A.D. -- Before the Divorce and After the Divorce. If there were happy images B.D., I wouldn't trust them. If there were happy images after, I also wouldn't trust them. I wanted to see images of my father as a part of my household, since I was 14 months old when he left and had no memories, and I dreaded the prospect. Did anyone catch on film the moment our original family ended, which I understood to be when my mother received a letter from my father over Christmas 1970? I put the films in the telecine batch for transfer, but I let Kevin do those on his own.

If my grandfather was the family Shutterbug, I am the Shutterfly of my generation. I clog cyberspace with yet another photo or video of my kids. Duncan was not even a month old when I bought his first album, and I get itchy when my albums fall more than a year behind. My eye is always lusting for the picturesque frame, always editing. My husband thanks me for documenting our family's lives. Other relatives undoubtedly groan when "Shutterfly.com" cheerily announces that "Samantha has shared some pictures with you!" I am victim to the parental delusion that every single second (=frame) of your child's life is momentous and worthy of record. And what I can't catch on film, I write in their little books. Or blog about.

As I write this I am backing up 28 hours of video shot over 8 years, and I am racing against time. The electronics of my camera, once state-of-the-art for documentary filmmaking but now obsolete even for home videos, are nearly shot. In this footage, I am watching Jordy and me get married; our children are born and are growing up. Baby Duncan's hands wave in the air like a conductor's; Reeve jumps wildly in his bouncy chair; Tucker gets tossed in the air by his exuberant brothers. My pleasure in filming them is palpable in the images.

But I also notice that the shot often cuts out precisely when the fun and love turns to sadness. Tucker tires of the tossing and cries. Reeve and Duncan's game of chase ends up in a collision. In truth, my displaced attention through the eyepiece seems to precipitate -- or at least fails to ward off -- the meltdowns. When the hard things hit, the screen goes dark. It occurs to me that the dark gaps may contain the parts of the story we most need to understand.

The most important gap in my photographic record spans June to August, 2005. On June 25, 2005 my brother-in-law Gary Lehmann was killed by a drunk driver. I remember at the time feeling that it was inappropriate, even sacrilegious, to film anything, and it didn't seem necessary. Images and feelings from that summer are burned vividly in my memory. But now I wonder about my nephews Christopher and David and niece Katie, who were 8, 4 and 2. Will they wish I had kept the camera rolling?

Less than a year after their father died, Christopher and David came down with the chicken pocks. It was mud season in Binghamton, New York, which tries the spirit in the best of times. I did the only thing I could think of -- Home Video Therapy. I edited a special episode of "Sesame Street", re-titled Duncan Green Street, of goofy vignettes intended to make them laugh. My good-sport husband submitted to a time-lapse of sticker "chicken pocks" appearing and disappearing on his face. Baby Duncan in the bath turned into "The Creature in the Tub." The Lehmann kids make an appearance as a mariachi band from video shot earlier that winter in Arizona. The episode ends with a montage of all the cousins to a folk song -- "There's a dark and a troubled side of life... But there's a bright and a sunny side too!"

The other day my oldest, Duncan (now 5), wanted to clarify that the movies I make are "real" versus Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase, for example, which is "just a story." This led us to a discussion of "Duncan Green Street". Duncan was emphatic that they are real. I tried to reveal my hand in spinning the story a bit. He rejected the idea that this makes them in any way "just a story." Worthy ethical questions arise from my editing of my children's, nieces' and nephews' memories, not to mention questions about my own character and courage. But if I could make these kids laugh, ethics be damned.

By the time I looked at my mom's family movies, it was two years later. We had left California and lived in Brooklyn. I had begun a new feature screenplay about a couple with two kids fighting to save their marriage. I was aware of the intersections of art and life: Jordy and I now had two kids under age 3 and our marriage was strained. The photo record wouldn't reveal this fact; stunning photos from a family trip to Jones Beach on June 7, 2008 belie the fact that Jordy and I fought most of the car ride home, for example. As I sat at the Lonelyville Café one morning struggling to craft the courtship of my fictional couple in such a way as to plant the seeds of their relationship's demise, the bomb of awareness went off. Duncan was nearing 4, Reeve nearing 14 months. I was fast approaching the exact point in the life of my new family when my original family died. More than anything in my life, I was determined to give the story a different ending.

I decided to watch at last my mother's 8mm family movies as research for my script and for my life. It was impossible not to look only for clues in absolutely everything leading up to the end of 1970. Lots of Springer Spaniel puppies. My older sister as a newborn in my father's arms on a sunny July day. Stunning vistas of the Rockies. My mother and little Kristin feeding ducks. A few years later: Memar and Gar take my mom and Kristin to a zoo in Colorado. Then I appear in a crib. Kristin grabs a zipline and fearlessly flies across the back yard. My father smiles encouragingly at Kristin as he teaches her to ski in the driveway. I wish I could hear. I search my parents' faces. I search Kristin's. I find no clues, no foreshadowing. Baby me appears again in my crib; clothed, unclothed, rolling, on my tummy. I assume my mother is filming. I can feel her eyes on Little Me through the lens, craving these fleeting moments the way I crave my kids'. My father makes a goofy face at toddling me, then breaks into a big smile. The camera tells something very true but also feels as if it is trying very hard. Taking turns filming, my parents never appear in the frame together at the same time.

Suddenly it is Christmas, 1970. A Christmas tree hemmed with packages. In our pajamas, Kristin and I gorge on gifts. The camera follows us for several minutes. My father is gone from the frame. Our toy-drunk little selves are oblivious. But then suddenly he is there, helping us to blow up a punch-dummy toy. I am totally confused. How can this be? The story I remembered was that Mom, Kristin and I flew back to New York to be with my grandparents for Christmas while Dad stayed back in Colorado to work on his dissertation. Then my mother received the letter in the mail that it was over. But here we are together, sharing the most normal of American Christmases. Dad helps me get on a little ride-on toy. Kristin tries to make her new bicycle go.

Cut to: Easter. My hair is longer, my walk more steady. The wrapping paper is cleaned up. And he's gone. I am carrying a little Easter basket. Maybe I was looking for eggs? Now I am looking for those missing three months between the Birth, the Death, and the Resurrection.

My mother kept her wedding photos in the closet; I've never seen one at my dad's. My grandparents' houses were purged of images of my Other Parent by the time I was conscious. This always made me very sad in a child's inarticulate way. A lot of my own childhood must have been edited out in the process. But I got used to it. I assumed what had been erased was too painful to re-visit.

So I was wary of my mother's nostalgia in asking me to transfer these films; I felt she was never been able to accept fully that things happened as they needed to, whereas I had had to craft my own version of the tale that made the divorce inevitable. I was fearful of opening mine to question. But as I watched, I felt a growing strain. I was imposing the narrative of divorce over delicate images trying to reveal other things to me.

Through her lens, my mother lingers lovingly on my little waving hands -- exactly as I once lingered one morning in Los Angeles on Duncan's little hands. She captures a quizzical look on my face that could be my own son Reeve's. She zooms in on my little feet, a shot I could match cut with Tucker's just this winter. I get to see myself crawling across the grass, then attempting a first step. Her camera must have had an on-board spotlight, as it literally lights up its subject while the corners of the frame sink into shadow. As I am watching, I let down my guard. Whatever else was going on between my parents, she captured my father's loving eyes on Kristin as they watch a 4th of July parade together, and on little me as I deliver a present to him in his arm chair. I let myself begin to trust these tender moments as also true.

My grandfather's home movies can seem naive to suffering, but he was not. Gar's mother died suddenly when he was two years old. I imagine his first memories were of his grief-stricken father and his own grief, both for his mom and for any conscious memory of her. It is probably true that Gar's impulse to film his family in the cheeriest light was a sales pitch, even to himself. (After taking a good snapshot, he used to exclaim, "That one'll cost you a million bucks!") But it does not follow that what Gar filmed was a lie; rather, they reveal how he too enjoyed the parental delusion that his kids' (and grandkids') lives were momentous and worthy of record, come what may. So too for my mother. Perhaps she rolled camera in hopes that the film itself would hold the family together, but maybe she just responded to the poignant moments that are the gifts of parenthood without knowing how the story would unfold. It wasn't until I became a parent and looked through the other end of their lenses that I understood.

Now I am eternally thankful for my mother's few captured frames from a past that resists retrieval. I forgive the eternally hopeful eye for any fictional license taken in her efforts against what I imagine was a bleak emotional backdrop for my parents. My mother's determination not to leave our past on the editing room floor, whatever discomfort it may cause, gives evidence of the greatest force in the universe, more powerful than divorce or death: A parent's love.


Postscript

By some mysterious orchestration, my universe pulled back together two years ago when my father and step-mother moved back to the New Hampshire valley where both my mom and step-father and my in-laws live. From my boys' perspective, not only don't they travel between houses to see their parents, but they get six adoring grandparents in one place. This winter during a rowdy lunchtime visit of cousins and various grandparents I was captivated by a loving conversation my father was having with my 3-month-old Tucker. I framed them up and rolled camera. After our return to New York, I got an email inviting me to view my sister Kristin's "Kodak Gallery album." As I clicked through her photos, I came upon a mirror image of Dad and Tucker, with me in the background behind my video camera. We caught the same moment, or it caught us. The kids hold the camera now, and the dad stays in the picture -- illuminated by the bright reflection of sun on fresh February snow.

The Empty Nest

Yesterday was Mother's Day. I have always been suspicious of this holiday as another Hallmark invention (a la Valentine's Day) exploiting vaguely religious roots to monetize the guilt of unexpressed love. My suspicions were confirmed: After animated birds delivered Mother's Day cards in a dozen different languages in an e-card I received yesterday, a link offered "a brief history of the holiday." It was indeed a Roman festival to honor the mother goddess Cybele, which was later appropriated by early Christians to honor the Virgin Mary.

What does it mean that the first link in my google search for "Cybele roman goddess"leads me to www.teenwitch.com where, among other options, I can stop corporate blood libel and take action for witches rights? From this site I can catch up on my pagan shopping and, after a few private lessons in casting spells, etc., earn my certificate as a High Priestess of Cybele. My teen witch activist friends also teach me that the Vatican is built on top of the original temple to Cybele, also known as Gaia -- the deified Mother Earth.

This last part interests me. I'm not the first woman in the History of the West to notice how the Christian Church removed the feminine creative powers from the Holy Equation. Maybe if I were raised Catholic I'd have a relationship with the Virgin Mary, but even Mary is a "mother of God" as opposed to being God(dess) herself. The Holy Family consists of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost. Many mothers I know report feeling like ghosts much of the time.

As a mother to 3 boys under age 5, I'm aware that their experience with women is pretty focused on me. I'm not a Freudian, but it makes sense that their attachment to me is both intense and ambivalent. Truth be told, I experience ambivalence on the other side. I have loved (obviously) having these babies; I delight in their bodies and minds; I am wired to respond to their sleeping, eating, and emotional rhythms. I take pride in anticipating their needs, whether for cheese sticks and oranges on the walk home from school or for an early bedtime, and I consider it a reward to watch them run happily in the woods lost in a fantasy of jungle exploration. But I get annoyed by the constant migration of matter in my house (how did the toothpaste end up in the kitchen sink? Why are their socks under every chair and table in the living room?). I get irritated when, for example:
...My body becomes a jungle gym or "fire pole".
...My freshly made bed ends up in a heap of covers and pillows ("But Mom! It's our fort!").
...I give in to requests to make "green eggs" that no one will eat thanks to, of course, their gross color.
...I ask a thousand and one times to get shoes on while feet remain stubbornly bare.
...Within seconds of the older boys falling asleep, baby Tucker wakes up.
...Duncan and Reeve must both possess the same toy boat at exactly the same time, and therefore chase each other screaming with claws bared.
...My efforts to be Casual Mom, i.e. allow them to paint in the basement without supervision, result in (gee!) Reeve's body in paint from head to toe.
...My refusal to rent Scooby Doo and the Cyberchase from the movie store for the umpteenth time gives grounds for a sit-in protest, i.e. two screaming boys sitting on the sidewalk refusing to move.
...Jordy's and my rare efforts to go on a date elicit tragic laments about our neglectful parenting from Duncan.
...I wonder whether my time-out from "work" will be penalized by the sputtering end of my barely begun filmmaking career (or any career for that matter).
And I get positively furious when Duncan or Reeve hurt the baby, intentionally or unintentionally. (Mama Tiger rage instincts, it seems, bypass my Homo Sapiens' "Positive Discipline" techniques.)

But in the middle of the other night, a chilling vision appeared. I was nursing Tucker and thinking forward to the long, loud hours after school/before dinner the next day when the Ghost of Mother Future visited me. One day these boys will no longer return to our house. No shoes to put away. No screaming matches to mediate. That inevitable quiet, foretold in this present 3am stillness, filled me with dread. The chaos of motherhood can feel unbearable until one contemplates the alternative. I can barely write this without my throat tightening.

I have never read my boys The Giving Tree. That book offends and grieves me. He comes back to her when he needs something from her. (Should we wonder that the tree is a "she"?) What does the tree get in return? She gets sat on! All that for the privilege of his ass on her back. Typical. This book not only conflicts with my coming-of-age politics, it offends my inchoate sense of environmental justice. Exploitation of Mothers = Exploitation of Mother Earth! High priestesses of Gaia/ Cybele, rise up! This is not the version of motherhood that I want to teach, so I guard the secret truth: I too would give my kids my apples, limbs and trunk even without a guarantee that they would come visit my stump.

So what is Mother's Day really about? To judge from the florist at the end of my street, it's about running out to buy Mom cut flowers on Sunday morning and a greeting card with a message written by an unpublished novelist in a cubicle at Hallmark. These are nice. (But involve maiming more plants.) Jordy and the boys gave me a very pretty necklace.

But my lingering question is, what do Moms really want on this day? Or at least, what do I want? I like holidays that act as reminders of actions we should often take -- remembering the dead, celebrating political freedom, giving thanks, the rebirth of hope, etc. Sadly, we can't even seem to remember for that single day, devolving as these holidays often do into ritual equations such as Independence = grilled burgers and beer, Hope = a new Wii. Rarely do they evoke the kinds of reflection that say, at its best, a good Passover seder demands. The engine of such reflection is imagination, putting oneself in someone else's shoes -- the fearful Israelite, the fighting Colonist, the starving Pilgrim, the Mother.

Yesterday by 11am, we wandered out to the sidewalk where the boys found all the neighborhood kids and their parents gathered with no particular plans for the day. The four mothers in the crowd had all surrendered our roles as Social Coordinators for the day. As a result, Mother's Day on Howard Place looked like a people adrift. (Truth be told, this masculine-inspired aimlessness resulted in delightful serendipitous play time for kids and parents alike.) The mothers struck up a discussion over whether Mother's Day meant we should "relish our roles as mother" by spending the entire day in the company of our children (the fathers thought this sounded good, which we promised to remind them of on Father's Day), or whether it meant we should be relieved of our motherly duties. And if so, what did that mean? Spa treatments? Lunch with our girlfriends?

What I want on Mother's Day is an indication that my family has taken the time to imagine my role and talk amongst themselves about what I give the family as the Mom and come up with some way to express their understanding. The problem with The Giving Tree is not only that the boy/man asks her to give again and again, it's that he takes her for granted. He never once pauses to imagine her as a being that exists for any reason other that serving his needs, or even how simply not to destroy her through his own taking. If Mother's Day hadn't been hijacked by Hallmark, maybe that boy would have learned to think about bringing the tree fertilizer. Or harvesting her apples in a sustainable way. Perhaps making a bench from one of her limbs instead of chopping the whole thing down. Moms, like trees, offer a lot more protective shade when they are left standing.

But like the tree, I felt mute to ask for what I wanted yesterday. By 3pm Jordy could tell I was tired and frustrated. Without a plan for the day, we all spent a lot of time waiting around the house trying to figure out what to do (never a good idea for us). Jordy's efforts to get the older boys out of the house to give me "peace and quiet" were well-intentioned, but most of the time they were out I was caring for the (awake) Baby Tucker -- not a chore, time I relish, but nonetheless, not a deviation from my regular days. Duncan had mentioned making dinner "for me," which reflects the assumption (rightly based in every day experience) that Mommy Makes Dinner, hence even feeding themselves was a gesture of kindness "to me," but Jordy, without whose help Duncan's ambitions wouldn't materialize, hadn't mentioned it, so I was unclear whether I should be getting dinner ready. When Jordy detected my exhaustion (up 5 times the night before)/restlessness/annoyance that no particular imaginative effort had been made about the day, he confronted me. "Tell me what you want," he asked.

The problem in answering his simple question was that the answer lay in what I wanted THEM to do, except the boys are 5 and 3 and hence depend on his leadership, so I really meant HIM. Jordy knew that and did not take it well. (Smacks of passive aggression. Felt yucky saying it too.) I am not his mother, but I wanted him to teach our boys how not to take me for granted, how to love me in ways beyond the function I serve to make their lives better/function. I wanted them to reflect on what I give that can go unnoticed in the flurry of daily life. I would have loved a gesture -- open to interpretation! -- that showed sympathy and understanding of how very much time I spend anticipating and attending to other people's needs. (I make a separate shopping trip to get the specific brands of cheese and cereal they all like!) In other words, I would have liked to have my needs anticipated, which of course, begins with imagining them.

I sound like a whiner. We don't like trees or women who complain about being under-appreciated. My mother gives my grandmother a hard time for insisting on Thank-You notes -- if that doesn't teach you not to demand appreciation, what will? And anyway, isn't the highest spiritual good to give without requiring acknowledgment? Or, more practically, can't I appreciate the daily tokens of acknowledgment my family gives me? My husband is adorable and extremely expressive of his love. He initiates the laundry when his underwear drawer is empty. He unloads the dishwasher without being asked. He reminds the boys to thank me for dinner. Duncan makes me a beaded necklace almost every Friday at school; Reeve runs into my arms at the end of the school day, "MOMMY!" Their desire for Mama-snuggles at bedtime and wake-up are actions speaking louder than words. (And in fairness and thanks to Jordy, he made a lovely spaghetti dinner, did all the dishes, walked the dog, and took out the trash.) Maybe the problem is the concentration of expectations into a single day. Why should we pressure ourselves to "fit it all in"? How contrived!

But again, I hear Rabbi so-and-so giving a midrash on such-and-such parsha about why we are bound to observe ritual days in the calendar: To remind us to direct our attention to things we need to do to keep ourselves morally or spiritually intact, usually involving either making good with people we love or with God. I am not ready to give up on Mother's Day as a meaningful day in the calendar. What will happen when the boys no longer need morning snuggles? Will they remember their old mama?

On my dog walk yesterday morning, I found a bird's nest that had fallen from a tree. I felt the mothers of my youth -- my mom, my step-mom, my aunt Sue-- exclaim, "Oo! Won't the children find that interesting!" as I picked it up and carried it home from Prospect Park. As my boys peered into it, I realized this was another woman's empty nest! Do those baby birds remember how carefully their mom sat on them in this nest? Do they appreciate how hard this bird mom and dad worked to construct this little home? I almost cried.

Duncan and Reeve snatched the nest from my hands and turned it into a crown, then a frisbee. Of course those baby birds don't remember. They are too busy making their own nests, finding worms, and juggling complicated brooding schedules. Maybe this is why Jordy forgot to send his mom a card. And maybe this is the greatest expression of love for one's mother: to undertake the making of your own nest, knowing the babies will fly away without calling (or even Skyping) as often as we'd like.

But next year, I won't wait. I won't even drop hints. Come Monday before Mother's Day, I'll ask flat out: So, guys, what's the plan for Mother's Day? And if they can't come up with anything, I'll help them imagine.