Family pictures and the art of the sideways glance

And now for the latest installment in my adventures while sorting through the family pictures spanning a 100 years. At least. You may be able to tell that I am very proud of this ongoing project but for the life of me, I'm not sure what gives me away every single time!

This week, I noticed a curious trend from pictures belonging to my grandparents on both sides. Of course they're looking young, dashing, handsome and beautiful in all of them, but inevitably, they're also looking sideways. To the left. To the right. At an angle. The pictures definitely benefit from the air of grace alternating with graveness that their beautiful profiles lend to them but I don't think it's all about showing off their best side. They made me pause and think.

My grandparents grew up at a time when photographs were still an occasion. Cameras were not a given in every household. And the opportunity still demanded an effort at dignity. Which is probably why I always think of my grandparents with awe. I didn't really get the chance to know my father's parents very well because they died when I was very young... and whatever memories I've fabricated of them while looking at their pictures are tinged with the respectability of their somber faces looking somewhere into the future (which is inevitably on the side of frame!). They weren't completely devoid of humor, I assure you... I have a few real memories tucked away of happy times spent swinging on their legs or finagling candy out of their unsuspecting kind hearts... but the pictures leave them looking forever all-knowing. Wise. With quiet dignity and romance.

And old habits die hard. This past summer, when my husband and I were visiting my family in India, we took a few pictures with my maternal grandmother - the only branch on the grandparent tree left for me. And it's with a faint smile that I now realize that my grandmother is looking off to the side even in this one, dated June 28th, 2011... in the age of digital cameras and instant gratification. My husband and I are looking directly into the camera - eyes wide open, smiling like monkeys - and there's my grandmother, seated between us... looking thoughtfully into the (sideways) distance.

Just another sign of the good ol' days. And what a pity it is to bid them farewell.

Aditi

"Everything must go!" - Except the memories

I walked in to the house today and the sight of all our things in boxes made me pause. No, it wasn't a surprise move engineered by the husband (that wouldn't have gone down too well, let me add)... it's just that we've been so occupied with the move that after being gone from the house for half-a-day, I'd forgotten that when we'd enter, the table where I put my keys wouldn't be there. That the dresser with the sunscreen was now in someone else's home. That the space occupied by the couch in the living room was now occupied by boxes. Lots of boxes. Three years worth of boxes.

It made me think back to the first time my family moved - it was a big one because it was from one country to another. The whole experience of 'moving' is quite different when you're 9. My parents made my sister and I go to every landmark in New Delhi and took our picture in front of it. There's one in front of the President's home, in front of a Lotus-shaped temple, sitting on the trunk of the car, outside the club where we learned to swim. I never understood what they were doing. It wasn't like we were going away forever. It wasn't like these places wouldn't be standing when we visited during summer break after a year.

That was in 1989. Today, packing the first home my husband and I set up together... putting away the mismatched plates we ooh-ed and aah-ed over when we bought them at an expensive store, the books we've scoured over on lazy evenings, selling the bookcase we painted together... I feel like I understand a little of what my parents were trying to do through the pictures. This house will continue to stand after we've moved out and new tenants move in. The yard will continue to flourish though one or two trees may take a hit in coming summers. The garage will still provide shelter to cars, bikes, strollers, and junk. But as of tomorrow, it will cease to be our own private paradise. It will have someone else's imprint on it... someone else's memories. That's what we were truly boxing away - the memories. And that's what my parents were trying to hold on to in the pictures - the memories of a city at a time it still belonged to them.

I mention the pictures because I encountered them again yesterday after years while in the process of sorting out my family's photo archives. I am fortunate that most of the photographs in my family's possession can fit into two large suitcases. I think the fact that we moved 10 times in 25 years necessitated some pruning of the collection... most of it intentional and some of it accidental. Along with the photographs that faced some downsizing, we also said goodbye to many books, journals, paintings, dolls, clothes and oh so much more with every new house. Of course, we were constantly adding to the collection as well... but not all the markers of my childhood made it.

My grandmother's home on the other hand is the complete opposite! She has had the amazing luck of living in the same home for almost 70 years... and it shows. Her room sprouts memories. From pictures on the dresser table and on the walls, to those tucked away in trunks, under the mattress, in drawers and closets, in storage rooms, in the garage and in the office... she has them all. The books, the clothes, the dishes, the music, the pictures, the letters! It makes sense to me, most of it does at least, because they are from a time I can remember. But what will my nieces and nephews make of it? Will they know the people in the pictures? Whose wedding it is that we're posing for? Why Nani still holds on to a doll with cotton coming out of her belly? Why there are still clothes hanging from closets of unused rooms? Whose clothes they are? What is the story behind the unused and falling-apart jeep under the mango tree?

My grandmother's a smart woman. She may be old and confined to bed for the most part, but at heart, she's still 16 - that's how old she was when she got married. Over the past two years, she has been organizing her papers, pictures, diaries and memories. So it's quite likely that the stories of our family will translate and transcend to future generations.

I just have to make sure that I take care of mine... that there's place enough for all the memories in the boxes. That nothing slips through the folds. That one day my children will know of their parents as a giggly young couple who set up home for the first time. Without them, but in anticipation.


Aditi

What's Love Got To Do With It? Everything!

With Mother’s Day upon us, I find myself thinking about how lucky I was to have a mother who indeed was worth celebrating. Though she passed away a few months ago, the example of her behavior and love has had and will continue to have a great influence on me. And that legacy directly affected how I raised my own children. I am so grateful that the path she followed has helped make my own journey such a joyful one.

It wasn’t that she was a perfect mother. She did a few things that a psychologist might have raised an eyebrow at but considering she and my father had ten children, a few mistakes were bound to be made when raising us. What she did seem to be perfect at was how she made all of us feel equally loved.

One thing that is very comforting to me is that I have several hours of audio and video interviews of her sharing stories of her life. I conducted most of these interviews before I began creating video biographies professionally. These are now such a wonderful link to memories of her. For instance some of my sibling would sometimes tease her about how she couldn’t carry a tune but that never stopped her from singing in church or singing to us. Now I have video proof that though her pitch might not have been perfect, her intent was.

Mom, we were truly blessed to have you in our lives.

Bridget Poizner

Difficult memories and the art of conversation

Giving voice to one's life story can be a challenging exercise. Many of us have stories tucked away that we do not want to revisit because of the feelings of shame, guilt, pain or grief that they may resurrect. Yet for all the powerful attempts at 'tucking away', are these memories ever totally banished?

I enrolled in a memoir writing class last month. When I tried to answer why, I explained to myself that this would help me in my client interactions; help me better understand the process of remembering that I attempt to lead the people in front of the camera on. That was part of the answer but as another part of me frowned at this need to rationalize why I would want to write about my memories from childhood, I acknowledged that it was an attempt to get to know myself better. Many people whom I have been privileged to create video biographies of have commented on how the process of telling stories, retrieving memories and reflecting on the important people in their lives leads them to connect the dots between their perception of themselves and how they came to be this way. It's as if the answers were always there in their minds, only the words to articulate them had proven elusive. So talking about their memories during the video biography interview felt like someone had just added sub-titles to the reel running in their head, and had added all the background information and character motivations for it all to seem crystal clear!

That's the experience I had two days ago when writing a seemingly innocent account of the foods I remember from my childhood, and why I still hadn't purged them from my system. What was supposed to be 500 words flooded shamelessly onto 7 pages. I always knew I enjoyed food (!) but what really surprised me were the things I associated them with. And the memories I had forgotten I knew suddenly introduced themselves again. I waxed eloquent about potatoes and funerals, sweets and fasting, rice pudding and religion, and in this mish mash of ingredients, I got to know myself a little bit better. Someone else in my class commented on how this writing prompt brought some difficult memories to mind... memories about a hard childhood where food was difficult to come by. And the things that needed to be done for survival. At first it seemed impossible to produce words that would express the conflicting feelings of shame and maturity. Words that other people would read or hear about. Words that brought up memories locked away with the key swallowed for safety. But once they did start to trickle out letter by letter, it brought a sense of understanding. Forgiveness. And the opportunity for the entire family to open up about something they had all experienced but never discussed.

It was not easy. But sometimes, easy is not necessarily the order of the day.


Aditi

The Power of Video

After I conduct interviews and I start the editing process, I am always struck with how effectively video captures the personality as well as the stories of my client. Along with the family history, the gestures, laugh, twinkle in the eye and sometimes an occasional tear are there to be shared with the viewer. And when the interview is a joint one between a couple or a group of siblings, their interaction deepens the experience even further.

All of my interviews are confidential, but this couple kindly agreed to let this clip be shared. I think it's a great illustration of how meaningful a video interview can be.



--Bridget Poizner

Third Year Reflections

It’s now been almost exactly three years ago that Save Their Story, Inc. was launched and it’s rather poignant for me to reflect on all of the families I’ve met and the interviews my associates and I have conducted since that time. We’re so fortunate that they place their trust in us as they share the stories that are important to them. And the gift I receive in turn from their trust is truly enriching.

In addition to the history I have learned through hearing about their experiences as well as the significance that chance occurrences played in many of their lives, I also come away with a very positive sense of family. The obvious reason for this is that families that are in conflict with one another do not seek us out to preserve their stories because perhaps they’d rather forget than remember those experiences. But I am encouraged by the interviews of clients where accounts of serious family strife are told with an emphasis on the lesson learned of not repeating the pattern once they were adults with families of their own. These are lessons they instill in their own children just by the power of their example. And I can’t think of a better legacy they give to their children than breaking that pattern of dysfunction.

--Bridget Poizner

Recording Family Stories: "Fine... I'll do it... someday!"

That's what one gentleman said to me at the end of my presentation on preserving family history and the need to do it NOW. I wasn't sure if he was being funny or sincere - so I confirmed my suspicions by raising my eyebrows, laughing and wagging my finger at him simultaneously.

"Some day?" I exclaimed. This after I had just spoken for 30 minutes on the need to seize the day by its horns!

"Oh. Well, yes, I mean someday soon," he beamed back to me, slightly nervous now.

A part of me wanted to sit him down and repeat everything I had just said to a larger audience. It wasn't about generating business because if it was, I wouldn't have devoted my talk to informing the general public on how they could create Video Biographies themselves - without having to rely on an outsider.

No. It was because I see it so often. Until someone falls ill, or ages overnight, or starts to lose their memory... or worse... until it's absolutely impossible to ignore the fact that we are not going to live forever, people rarely think much about leaving a legacy that is more interactive and meaningful than mere objects or money.

Yet what is it that we treasure the most? The memories. The stories. The sense of who a person was when he / she was still alive and in their prime. We treasure the opportunity to feel like we once knew them, even if they lived two generations ago. The chance to understand where our journey began and how we happen to be where we are today. It is the sense of continuity that we value - the sense of belonging and creation and nurturing.

Why then do we put it off for 'someday'? 'Later'? 'Soon'? 'Tomorrow'? All of which so easily become 'too late'.



Aditi

Documenting family stories...The unassuming archivist in us all.

Human curiosity is such a wonderful thing. What do you think? (Sorry, I couldn't resist throwing that in there!)

In the last few weeks, I've met with several remarkable people, who without quite realizing it, have been doing a great job in preserving family history.

Take, for example, the lady I met with yesterday. I knew I was going to walk across the room and make her my friend the minute I saw her. There were about 20 of us at the meeting for the upcoming Austin Groups for the Elderly (AGE) conference in Austin. (In case you're interested, it's on Saturday, September 12, at the Norris Conference Center in Austin - and it's Free!). Anyway, when the lady walked in, it was impossible to miss the air of grace that entered the room along with her. When we finally did get chatting, we sparked instantly - despite the 30-years age difference!

She went on to tell me a story about the over-filled closets in her mother's room. They were bursting at the seams with photographs collected over a lifetime... and not just hers! They were in color. Black and White. Polaroid. Negatives. Big. Small. Frayed edges. Yellowing paper. All sorts of photographs, telling the stories of people she had known, lost, and still remembered. It was a shrine. A treasure trove. A mess.

No one was allowed near them for fear of losing / tearing / losing any of the contents of the closets. Till one day, my new friend realized that her mother was not growing any younger - and as for herself, she still had no idea who the people in those photographs were. Thus followed one of the best decisions of her life - she insisted... and I mean insisted!... that her mother write the names of the people behind each picture. The suggestion wasn't met with much enthusiasm initially but once she got started, her mother seemed transformed as she relived the memories while labeling and documenting the people in the pictures and their stories.

It wasn't until a few years later when her mother's memory started to fail that my new friend truly realized the value of the project she had assigned to her mother. There were too many pictures in those closets and her mother wasn't quite able to label them all... but because of the ones that she had, the family now has something with which they can piece the dots together.



Another gentleman whom I interviewed a while back, gave me a guided tour of his house and we made a rather long stop at the study, which was again filled with pictures, but this time, they were all on CD. The gentleman confided in me that he had scanned up to 15,000 pictures from his family and ancestors' lives... and transferred them on to CDs so that technology won't leave behind his memories and history. There were still several thousand more pictures to go... but I could tell they were in safe hands.



Yet another new acquaintance (we're email pals!) - Jerrie Hurd has made stories her life's passion - and if you read her blog, you'll see what I mean (http://jerriehurd.wordpress.com/). Her blog is a tribute to the power that stories hold over each of our lives. And it's interesting to see how individual stories come together to provide a cohesive reflection of community history over the years.



If you find that you're the keeper of your family's stories, then my question to you is this - What are you doing to preserve those stories?

What are you doing in order to add yours to the collection?

And have you thought about how you are going to pass these on to future generations?

Because a Video Biography might just be what you need to create.



Aditi

Unlocking family memories... The golden prison in the shape of a teardrop.

Seeing how my last few posts have been centered around sad themes of loss and grief, I'm going to chug along and keep that ball rolling! But be not afraid, o brave reader, this one is not a tear-jerker. Though bad things do happen to good people - let that be my disclaimer!

This one is about my other grandmother... not Nani, whom we have read about so much by now... but Dadima, my father's mother. She passed away when I was at that age when all you remember about a person is her smile or the scent of the coconut oil in her hair or her white chiffon saris or her big spectacles. You know, the abstract things. Like the gold chain she wore around her neck, which looked like small, sturdy golden staple pins strung together from end to end. And in the center of this pretty chain, was a pendant. A pendant that took the form of a teardrop shaped prison - with bars made of pure gold. Its sole inmate was a perfect creamy pearl. It was exquisite. And I lost it.

When Dadima died, I was still so young that no one bothered to confide in me the workings of a will. All I knew was that for some strange reason, she left me the chain and the pendant. I was in such a quandry, though I can hardly confess to even knowing the word at the time. I had recently read 'Little Women' for the 20th time and it seemed to me like a sign from God that I must be 'Amy'. She had a turquoise ring which was gifted to her by a crotchety old aunt, and all she wanted to do was wear it the whole time, even though it was two sizes too big. I faced no such problem - what with chains being one-size-fits-all. But I couldn't decide if I should store it safely in a well-armored bank locker, or if I should wear it all the time... 'with the pendant close to my heart', justified my vain mind. Quite obviously, vanity won.

And so it came to be that I wore it all the time. I worried that frequent showers might wear down the sheen of the pearl but I am happy to report that it did not keep me away from them. I resolved to bequeath it to my first born daughter with a note explaining the journey of the chain thus far. I tucked it inside my school uniform shirt because we weren't allowed to wear accessories of any kind. And I fancied that I just had to have been Dadima's favorite grandchild if she left the chain to me.

Then, of course, I lost it.

My family was moving from one house to another - and we were doing all our packing on our own. And somewhere between 'organizing' my 9-year-old life and deconstructing my soon-to-be former room, the chain and pearl pendant were lost forever. I can only imagine the new occupants of my room one day finding them hidden underneath the carpet or behind the bookshelf or stuck in between the shelves in the closet... and to them it would only be a chain and a pendant.

Whereas for me, it has become how I remember my grandmother.




Aditi

My Own Chance Encounter

Thinking about the last post I made, I realize a chance encounter was important in my own life as well. Meeting my husband was in large part due to a conversation I had when I was a freshman in college waiting in my dorm's lunch line. I started having a conversation with a girl I hardly knew and she was telling me about a place she was going to live for her sophomore year that was an off-campus student co-op (a place where the students all pitched in to maintain the property as well as cook the meals). I had always thought that for my sophomore year, I would continue to live at a dorm on campus but her description intrigued me and right after lunch I did some investigating. To make a VERY long story short, I did end up living at the co-op and two weeks after I moved in, I met one of my neighbors who lived down the hall. We became good friends and later started dating. Just this past week, we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary. I can't help but think that if I hadn't had that conversation with someone I hardly knew that day long ago, my life would have been very different.
--Bridget

The Magic of Chance Encounters

When I look back at the interviews I have conducted the last couple of years, I am often struck by the impact a chance encounter can have on a person's life. Often it can start someone on the road to a serious relationship which is what I witnessed with several of my clients. With their permission, I'd like to relate the experiences of two of them.

One of them told me that he met his wife by asking her for a match for his cigarette while walking on a beach in a town he was visiting. I guess it was a rare case in which smoking ended up affecting someone's life in an advantageous way. The other man had just returned home from serving as a pilot in World War II and was walking down the street in his town when he noticed a girl he had gone to high school with years before who was waiting at a bus stop and he stopped to say hello. Both men ended up having long happy marriages as a result of being in a certain place at a certain time. It's fun to think how a minor action they took brought forth such blessed results. --Bridget Poizner

Tongue-tied and full of stories.

Earlier this week, I interviewed an elderly gentleman. Prior to the day of the interview, there was a lot of email correspondence and calls put in between his wife and me... his wife being the one who commissioned the Video Biography in the first place.

Her main cause of worry was that her husband would not stop talking once he got started. And she feared that that would make it extremely tricky for me to steer the conversation from one topic to the other. Now that's valuable insight to have on your subject - and it allowed for me to customize my questions to his life yes, but also to his personality. And I approached the day with grit of steel and a determination to have a fruitful interview no matter what.

What I hadn't been told was that the husband had had a series of small strokes in the not so distant past, and this had left his memory quite jagged... and by his own admission, in a state of affairs he wouldn't have chosen for himself. Nonetheless, he was bursting with stories to share. Before the camera went on, he took me on a tour of the house... and we paused at walls with little bits of history hanging from them, and an office that looked like a treasure trove of memorabilia accumulated over decades of a life well spent. It spanned across generations, continents, countries, dictatorships, monarchy, democracy... it was like getting an insider's view into a history text-book. And he had lived through a lot of it - and knew of ancestors who had lived through even more.

This is going to be a great interview, I thought to myself.

But when he was seated comfortably in his favorite chair in the corner of the living room he always claimed for his own... and I had him nicely framed in my camera... something changed. He became guarded. And not very forthcoming with information. I wondered where the man who talked too much was hiding! In past experience I've had some people who take a while to warm up to being interviewed on camera... so I persisted and in his defense, he tried to answer the questions as best he could. But I was yet unable to capture a true reflection of his personality.

When the first tape got over, I paused the interview in order to load a new tape. In this brief 5-minute interruption, the gentleman got extremely chatty. He started to tell me stories of his grandparents from his childhood - stories that he hadn't shared when I had interviewed him about them. So without announcing that we were now recording the conversation, I pressed the red button - and lo and behold, I managed to get a lot of stories out of him - as well as a feel of the person he is by asking about his viewpoint on several world events.

Of course the time came when this subterfuge had to come to an end and I had to revert to drawing his attention to the camera - instantly, he transformed into a grave man.

But in those few moments, we achieved something that would make it all worthwhile.

'Slap'stick.

The following incident is one of my most distinctive memories from childhood, involving one of my favorite grandpas - and you'll see for yourself how he earned that status for himself in just a bit. Growing up, there seemed to be an awful lot of grandpas going around. Grandmas too, but this one is about Grandpa K. In India, family is really close-knit and it doesn't matter if you're the brother of a grandparent or the cousin of an Aunt to whom you're related only by marriage... it's all family and you call them by the names applicable to them. We have names for every possible computation of 'relativity' that you could think of.

Grandpa K was the real brother of my real grandmother - Grandma M, my father's mother.

Grandpa K was a lawyer and it is a universal fact that if that's your profession, no matter where you live, you make enough money to be happy. And so he was. As was his wife. They were so happy, that it made them semi-progressive... his wife was the only grandma I knew in my large family who would drink her booze, enjoy it and ask for more. Not that that made her an alcoholic or anything. Of course, everyone knew and at weddings and other social gatherings, glasses covered with white napkin around them would make their way mysteriously into her hands... the logic being that if the glass is covered and you can't see through, you really couldn't be sure what she was drinking. But everyone knew. Even I did. And I was only 6.

Anyway, to return to Grandpa K, he had a peculiar habit. And before I was incorporated into the ritual, I thought he might just be evil and sadistic based on all that I could make out of it.

He would line up all the young ones, based on seniority, and then walk down the line giving everyone a loud whack on the face. And then he'd chortle. I knew one day my turn would come and I tried to keep my distance from him as long I could help it. But sure enough, on one of our visits to his house, when the only kids in the vicinity were my elder sister and me, it became rather hard to turn invisible.

'Aha,' he said, sighting us.

'Tee hee,' giggled my sister, who was usually too dignified to be caught giggling.

'Frown', thought I.

'I know exactly what you both are here for,' went on Grandpa K, smiling beatifically. And then he lined us up... even though it was just the two of us. Then he muttered something that sounded like black magic and down came his right hand on my sister's cheek... and she squealed with laughter. And placed her hand over her cheek - because it had to smart, right?

Then Grandpa K moved over to me. Muttered the unintelligible stuff again while I braced myself for what must obviously be a right of passage into adulthood where pain must become equivalent to pleasure. Down came his right hand on my cheek... I closed my eyes in anticipation and winced. His hand landed on my cheek and I could feel something knobby on the point of contact. Great, he has warts to add to the humiliation!

But wait, the stuff is moving... and of my own volition, I find that my hand has moved under his hand and is now cupped around... candy!

Really?

That was his thing apparently. He had a jar full of colored candy, different flavor, sparkly wrapping... the promise of endless delight. He'd hide a handful in his pocket, and reload the ammunition after every 'slap' he placed on our young, innocent faces. The slaps were nothing more than a pat on the cheek - but he'd add sound effects which made it seem like they were forceful and must hurt beyond doubt.

Oh the things grown ups do to win the gratitude of young children!