Livy Smith, Primrose Hill, London, 2018
Sorting through old photographs, I come across those taken when my children still lived at home. The ones of them as babies and “littles”, are charming, and make me smile in fond remembrance.
But the ones of them as adolescents really make me pause; they are loose limbed and somewhat awkward in these, often moody and with eyes averted from the camera. In many, they appear poised to make a movement, their shoulders turned away as though ready to take off somewhere. Of course, that is what they were actually intending to do: to slip away from the proverbial nest in arcs of flight all their own.
It occurs to me that these photographs capture so many moments of their transition to maturity, moments that seemed mercurial and exasperating at the time the pictures were taken. I see them differently now, these photographs, that is. I see their restless spirits, searching for a way into identities of their own; I feel the stirrings of their need to make their escape, as the poem below so perfectly speaks to. What I often had taken for perverse ingratitude, was simply the journey we all make – to find ourselves, be ourselves, make ourselves anew.
Dusk by Tracy K. Hill
What woke to war in me those yearsWhen my daughter had first grown intoA solid self-centered self? I’d watch herSit at the table—well, not quite sit,More like stand on one leg whileThe other knee hovered just over the chair.She wouldn’t lower herself, as ifThere might be a fire, or a great blackBlizzard of waves let loose in the kitchen,And she’d need to make her escape. No,She’d trust no one but herself, her ownNew lean always jittering legs to carry her—Where exactly? Where would a child go?To there. There alone. She’d rest one elbowOn the table—the opposite one to the bent legSkimming the solid expensive tasteful chair.And even though we were together, her eyesWould go half-dome, shades droppedLike a screen at some cinema the old aren’tLet into. I thought I’d have more time! I thoughtMy body would have taken longer goingAbout the inevitable feat of repelling her,But now, I could see even in what foodShe left untouched, food I’d bought and madeAnd all but ferried to her lips, I could seeHow it smacked of all that had grown slackAnd loose in me. Her other armWould wave the fork around just aboveThe surface of the plate, casting aboutFor the least possible morsel, the tiniestGrain of unseasoned rice. She’d dipInto the food like one of those shoddyMetal claws poised over a valley of rubberBouncing balls, the kind that lifts nothingOr next to nothing and drops it in the chute.The narrow untouched hips. The shouldersStill so naïve as to stand squared, erect,Impervious facing the window open
Onto the darkening dusk.