family

November 6, 2015 by Kat

Connected through the Camera

If you’ve lost a loved one, you know how much photography matters. These little slices of time we capture in photographs are sometimes all that is left behind of a person.

My father passed away twenty years ago this year in December. He was 51 years old, and it was sudden. An accident. One day he was there and the next day gone. My family and I have our memories of him, a few sentimental items (the guitar being a big one), and some photos. My father was 21 in the photograph Brandon is holding.

Seeking Similarities: Eli 1965, Brandon Eli 2015

My son, now fourteen, never met his Grandpa Eli. He only knows him through me. The stories I tell, the name I gave him, the photos I have to share. I’ve tried to help him know this missing grandfather, this person who meant so much to me, but it’s hard. My dad will never be fully real to my son. I can only give him snippets and impressions. A 2D portrait instead of the 3D person.

When the PhotoArts Guild picked the theme of “Life and Death” for our biennial exhibition, it was a chance to go outside my tree-lined comfort zone and create an image that was personal. Something that speaks to the loss of death and the continuation of life. Life always goes on after loss. Always.

Nothing expresses that quite so much as the parent-child relationship. My father to me to my son. Here, in this image, three generations are connected through the camera lens. Across space and time, there is still a connection. A photograph can remind us of that.

The “Life and Death” exhibition of the Willamette Valley PhotoArts Guild is up through December 11, 2015 at LaSells Stewart Center Giustina Gallery on the Oregon State University campus. My photograph received a “Special Mention” from Julia Bradshaw, the director of the Oregon State University photography program.

March 16, 2015 by Kat

A Life Well Lived

Last week was a reminder of what a life well lived looks like, in the end. It looks like a room full of people, sad to see you go. It looks like scholarships and foundations which last beyond your time on earth. It looks like crying and laughter alike, from family and friends whose lives you touched.

Last week I disappeared from my normal life, the blog, and everything else to attend the Celebration of Life of my dear great Aunt Mernie in Tucson, Arizona. She was 92 years old, the last of her generation in our family, and definitely an example of a life well lived. She was a longtime teacher, volunteer and community member who touched many people’s lives and inspired everyone to do their best, right up to the very end.

My sister and I talked right after she died, and tried to figure out what was so special about Aunt Mernie. I said it was because we always felt seen by her. She acknowledged our presence, our person-ness, from the time we were young children. She continued to acknowledge our presence, on through our adult lives with our own children. I got a birthday card from her just last fall. Who expects a birthday card from their great aunt at 92?

Listening to different people’s memories at her Celebration of Life gave me a more complete picture of just how many lives she touched. How many other people felt like adopted grandchildren, as we did.

And it inspires me, in showing me what a life well lived looks like. I know I can’t ever be just like Aunt Mernie. I don’t have an inherent disposition that is so kind and generous, as hers was. But if I can live my life in a way that influences people in a positive way, even just a small fraction of what she did, then I will call it a success.

Aunt Mernie, thank you for that. You will be very missed.

August 19, 2014 by Kat

Rustic Living

A couple of months ago I wrote about the unexpected opportunity to remodel our kitchen. At the time, we had no usable kitchen and were just dealing with drying out the water from the leak and hadn’t yet decided how to resolve the issue. First things first, right?

Two and a half months later, we have a minimally functional kitchen and a plan for a full remodel. It’s amazing how everything snowballs. One little leak to a full kitchen remodel, flooring through most of the house and a fresh coat of paint through much of it too. It’s also amazing how long everything takes… First sorting out what we wanted to do (minimum fixes or full remodel), then getting the contractor bids, and on to decisions and orders. The decisions have been made, the orders have all been placed. Now we wait.

In the meantime, I thought I would give you a tour of some of the features of our interim kitchen.

Isn’t this a lovely storage unit? We have no water or drain hooked up, so the sink is really just there to plug the hole in the cabinet. We keep our paper and plastic ware stocked there, to keep us from dumping things into the sink. It’s amazing what a habit that is! Since there is no water or drain, we have no dishwasher either. We do our dishes in the bathroom sink. Kind of inconvenient, as it’s down the hall, but my son has learned a useful life skill (washing dishes by hand) so that’s a plus.

Note the charming rustic finish of the window frame above the sink. Also the lovely grey countertops. Folding plastic tables fit perfectly on the cabinets as temporary counters.

We still have use of our cooktop, but the oven is currently unusable. In the effort to get the flooring up to dry out the subfloor, the range was moved and the glass on the oven door broke along with the handle. So we don’t use our oven at the moment, for fear of burning ourselves or our pets. No point in replacing it when you are getting a new gas range in a few weeks, right?

Note also the rustic subfloor look we’ve got going on! Yes, it’s attractive, and matches that rustic window framing. A nice touch, don’t you think? I’m sure it will soon be all the rage.

There is one bright spot in all of this. We got our new refrigerator early, and so we actually have water in the kitchen now, from the water dispenser in the door. What a luxury! I’ve never had such a thing before. We don’t fill up the pasta pot here, but it’s nice to at least have a water source for little things. Like drinking.

It’s not been optimum, but we’ve been making it work. If at the beginning we knew how long everything would take, we might have at least hooked our sink back up, but there’s no point this close to the end.

In about three weeks, the full demo begins and the remodel will truly be underway. We’ll lose our kitchen for a month, which at this point seems inconvenient but not insurmountable. Grill, crockpot, and microwave for cooking. Refrigerator in the garage, water down the hall in the bathroom. What’s a few extra steps to get dinner ready? It doesn’t seem so inconvenient, since we’ve already been living with a partial kitchen for two months.

A kitchen remodel wasn’t in our plans this year, so all of this certainly wasn’t the timing of our choosing, but we have adapted and are muddling through. At the end of all of the work, with a new kitchen, flooring and paint, our house of sixteen years will feel practically brand new. I’m not sure, after four months without a fully functional kitchen, we’ll even quite know what to do.

August 12, 2014 by Kat

Do’s and Don’ts for a Successful Summer Vacation

I’m back! Did you miss me? My family and I were off last week for some fun in the sun in Leavenworth, Washington.

Before we left my son asked me if this was Travel or Vacation. You see, in our family, we have a different meaning for each word. When we Travel, we are going somewhere to enrich ourselves. We pack our days full of sightseeing and activities. Travel typically involves advance planning, tickets, timetables and lines. Vacation, however, involves sleeping in, lots of reading and loose timetables. We are flexible on what we do, or don’t do, and when. It’s more about relaxation than enrichment.

Last week was definitely Vacation, and I thought I would share a Do’s and Don’ts for a successful vacation based on our week away.

DO go someplace hot, dry and bug-free. 95+ degrees Fahrenheit is good. That way, you have no guilt about laying around reading all afternoon because it’s too hot to do anything else. Naps in air conditioning are prescribed. Visit the pool or the river or both whenever you start to overheat. Stay in your wet swimsuit and air dry all evening as things cool off. (I’m usually cold, so it was awesome to feel hot enough to want to get into the water.)

DON’T go someplace hot, dry and with extreme fire danger if you are intending to hike. There is a good chance all of the trails will be closed so that the officials don’t have to worry about rescuing stranded hikers if they wander into an existing fire area or if a new fire starts. Leave your hiking boots at home. Flip-flops are the only shoes allowed on vacation. (So much for my daily hikes!)

DO have your son, an only child, bring a friend. It is totally worth the extra money you will spend for said friend to join your family. It’s like giving your child the gift of a sibling, only one they’ve chosen, who listens to you, is polite, and willingly helps with chores. All that, and you don’t have to pay for an additional college education! It’s a bargain. With the friend along, you will get more relaxation time in, and keep the surly teenage behavior at bay. (It was lovely!)

DON’T wake anyone up early, especially teenagers. Let them sleep. Everyone will be happier. Let them stay up as late as they want, so they sleep in even later. Spend the cool hours of the morning doing your own thing… Walking the dog, reading, or sleep in yourself. (I would sleep in if I could, but I’m an early riser and enjoy my quiet morning time, even on vacation.)

DO enjoy the touristy, Bavarian-themed town you are staying near. Sample the local merchandise, wander the stores, and maybe actually even buy something for yourself (like a cute skirt). Sit in a beer garden and have a bratwurst and an imported German beer. Daily. (I finally found someone who knew what a Radler was and could make one for me – first time since the real Bavaria!)

DON’T expect fancy museums or educational activities. Visit the local Pioneer Museum with its random collection of artifacts and pioneer buildings, go miniature golfing, float in a tube down the river, visit the local candy-making factory or all of the above. Only one activity per day is allowed. More than that, and it will become Travel. (Ever heard of Aplets and Cotlets? Yes, we saw how they make them. Free samples! Yum!)

DO read lots of books. Four or five, at least. Stock up on books before you leave and enjoy the time guilt-free. Fiction only please, no non-fiction is allowed on vacation. (The best book I read last week was Visible City by Tova Mirvis.)

And here is the kicker, the biggest DON’T of them all…

DON’T, absolutely ever, set your iPhone on a stack of books on the edge of a sink. Especially not a sink with a shallow pool of soapy water in it. Especially not if you plan to leave for 15 to 20 minutes to take the dog for a walk. Because if you do, there is a good chance that when you return, you will find your iPhone in the sink, swimming in the shallow pool of soapy water, flickering ominously. Not only will you lose your phone for the rest of the trip, but you will lose your camera too. (Even after turning it off right away and keeping it in a bag of rice for 3 days, it never recovered. Luckily, we were able to stop at the Apple store in Portland on the drive home and I got my camera, er, phone, replaced. Whew!)

So there you have it, a few Do’s and Don’ts for a successful summer vacation. Do you have any to add to the list? Let’s hear them!

June 25, 2014 by Kat

Telling Stories

I believe all photographers are storytellers. Whether we are telling the story of an event, of who someone is, or of beauty in the moment, every photograph is a story. As we put these individual stories together, they become the story of ourselves, the photographer. Where we come from, who we are interested in, what we see, how we choose to portray the world. Whether we realize it or not, we are in every photograph we create.

Returning from my family visit to Ohio, I realized that there is a story to tell in photographs that I haven’t told before. A story I was able to photograph for the first time since becoming an artist. In my few days there, I barely scratched the surface. I didn’t even really try to capture and tell this story fully, but I see it there, in the images I returned home with.

It’s the story of my family heritage on my father’s side: Amish.

But it’s not just the story of “the Amish.” I’m not an anthropologist or historian, to chronicle the timeline or study the culture. I’m not a reporter, looking to get the inside scoop. It’s the story of my father, my family, me. I want to understand how it all fits together; how it influenced who I am.

My father grew up Amish on a farm in Holmes County, Ohio. He was one of nine children: Eight are still living, seven are living in or near Holmes County, five remained Amish.

My Uncle Aden now owns the family farm, 155 acres in total, which includes 50 acres of woods, two farm houses, outbuildings, and a barn of which no one quite knows the age. My Uncle David estimates at least 150 years old.

Growing up in Colorado, we visited every year or two. We were suburban kids getting the taste of a farm life for a quick week. My dad pitched in with the chores and we could tag along in the barn, as long as we stayed out of the way or helped our cousins. We might get to feed the horses, the giant draft horses that worked the field or the buggy horses, almost dainty in comparison.

We might try milking a cow (by hand, at that time) or try to catch the wild barn cats who kept the rodent population in check. There were always adventures waiting in the barn, if you weren’t afraid to get dirty.

Those memories are just echoes in my head now. There are no cows left on the family farm where my father grew up. The milking stalls are empty.

The milk house is quiet. Left as if someone might come back, any moment, and start the operation up again. Maybe someday, one of my cousins or my cousins kids, will start farming here again.

It’s a hard life, but an honest way of life. You think, looking in from the outside, that it is so different from our modern lives, but it’s not really. It doesn’t have to be. Living simply, working hard, enjoying family, creating community… We can all have these things whether we have electric lights or not. They are all choices.

My father chose not to remain in the Amish way of life, but he chose the things that mattered out of it. And each of us, me, my sister and brother, have that handed down to us as well. We get to carry that piece of the Amish heritage with us.

This was the story that came out of my photographs. A tiny piece of who I am and where I came from. I didn’t know I was capturing this story, any story really, when I was there. I sometimes forget that my photographs are not of some random subject, but of me, no matter what thing is in them.

Looking at these images, I feel as if there are so many stories left, waiting to be captured. Waiting to be told. I feel a pull to go back, and explore these stories more.

June 13, 2014 by Kat

Back in Time

There is something about being with family that sends you back in time. Visiting my grandmother’s house in Ohio, along with my Mom, brother and sister, was one of those experiences.

It made me remember who I am, where I come from, but also who I am not.

It reminded me that I am my father’s daughter, and I have much in common with the family on his side. The homebody part of me. The introspective, thinking part of me. The part that wants solitude and time in the woods.

It also reminded me how much I am my own person, how much I’ve changed since childhood, but how easy it is to slip into expected roles. It’s as if we all step into our scripted places, when together. We aren’t always our real selves. It’s too hard to be, with so little time with each other.

But it was a reminder, of who I was, where I came from, and who I am now. A beautiful, poignant reminder.

All images are from my Grandmother’s house in Holmes County, Ohio, and processed using the Vintage Photo app.

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