baby photos...

I have none. Maybe it is why I write this blog, so after I go there is some proof that I existed. Yes, there are family photos of me from the time my children were little, but in those photos I was deFINEd by them or deFINEd by my job, my husband, or other relationships. No big deal. But it hit me hard when I found out that my mother had had one of her little fits and pitched the baby photos one afternoon. Mom said my brother did it. I know his heart and he would never have done such a thing. She was the culprit.

Tear.out.heart.insert.lump.in.throat.

I honor every photo of my kids and even have detailed journals from the time they were little. I've often thought of what I would grab if the house were burning down... and, sure enough, it would be the photos and journals of my children. They mean everything to me.

My mother had some kind of borderline personality disorder. I used to tell people that she was an alcoholic to explain her bizarre behavior, but she didn't really drink. She was just certifiably nuts and so I found what I determined to be an inaccurate but plausible excuse: booze. At eighteen, I was distancing myself far away from Philadelphia step by step.. inch by inch even - marrying (far too young) into a family whose culture and religion  were different from my own.

That's another blog post; another day.

I was lucky to marry a genuinely kind man who has been very good to me and is a wonderful (did I say wonderful) father. He carries no drama the likes of which permeated through the house on Harts Lane where I grew up. His parents are not dramatic people either... just simple, regular folks who seem to honor baby pictures like I do. I've gotten so many good values from them although I've had other good role models along the way.. It is determining what is right and what is wrong, and figuring it out yourself when someone hasn't shown you any direction. Still, my compass is skewed, even though I did my best. Destroying your child's baby pictures is just horrifying and cruel on so many levels and has made me feel unimportant somehow. I did figure that out on my own.

This sort of mothering made me far too sensitive, distrustful of people, hurt, edgy, and ultimately unfulfilled. Our childhood forms us like clay. As Steve Jobs said, it takes thirty years to form habits and the next thirty years to have those habits define you. Ironic as it may be, he never saw those thirty years or lived past the age of fifty-six, the exact age my dad died. Also ironic that his initial rejection from his birth parents defined him too.

Cancer has helped with my sadness over the pictures. Weird, but also true. Cancer puts my mother in perspective to me and gives me the ultimate truth of the lost pictures. Compared to the great loves of my life, those photos mean absolutely nothing.