A lack of evidence

After singing my daughter to sleep, I sat there in the dark having a look through some images of my pregnant wife from two years ago on my phone. This shot was taken in our lounge room and I would like to reedit it at some point. I would like to reedit many of my images. What I would really love to be able to do is go back in time and take the images again but of course, that is not possible.

From about halfway through the pregnancy, my wife started getting very bad pains and spent several periods in hospital. It was quite difficult because she was also working at what would be considered an important position in another city that required a great deal of time. The pain wasn't threatening the baby or her but, it meant she was unable to walk.

In the end circumstances dictated that I was unable to spend anywhere near the amount of time taking photos of something that will only happen once in our lives. Nearly every time we did try, it was rushed and much less enjoyable than it should have been due to it.

We did have some fun of course but rushing these moments always left me somewhat deflated as I always knew that the never again issue was there. I was hoping to savor it more and have images that would remind me of those moments in the lead up to what would change our lives forever.

It is interesting these days as I think that many people feel similar, that unless there is photographic evidence of experience, the memory will not have as much value. I don't quite think in this way but I know my own memory and I know that the images are more than just a reminder of what happened, they are a peg that holds a whole range of information including conversations, emotions and often, even camera settings.

The other day I was talking with @galenkp about photography and mentioned that the photographic evidence left from the last two years makes me look a lot like an absent father, as it is me who is always behind the camera. In some way it makes me a little sad to think that in years to come, my daughter isn't going to see how much I held her and how often we did things together even though I am there for all of the moments in every single image.

At the end of the day, photos are just photos and no matter how good an image is or, how great the moment looks, it is in the moment that really matters, even if there is no memory of it at all. We tend to put much too much weight on memory and far too little on what we are currently doing.

I think that for many these days, events are planned with the expectation of future memory rather than the actual attention paid to the experience itself. Perhaps this is the social media share life phenomena where people are curating their lives to look good online regardless of whether they are enjoying themselves or not.

In most of the images, the pain my wife was experiencing isn't apparent unless, you know here like I do. I do have other images that make it much more obvious but, they are not for public viewing, at least not yet. Despite all the challenges my wife and I have and will face, we are lucky to have a daughter who makes every moment of discomfort worth it.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]