A Winter's Tale
Like a small lament from a Samuel Barber Adagio, my heart these last cruel months of winter has been filled with sadness. I wish it weren’t so, for I do not easily fall into this well, but work, winter, health, the state of affairs of our nation have weighed heavily on my soul, and now finally there is that first faint aroma of Spring in the air. I am beginning to feel once again, like all the energetic buds around me, beginning to feel the pull and joy of re-emergence. I am beginning to once again believe in myself.
Unfortunately it is my belief to feel empathy for others, to see the world around us with a sense of optimism and humor, I must be able on occasion to fall down this dark well of souls so that at some point I can find my way back out into the light of Spring.
When I was a young man in my early twenties and I lived in Connecticut, I must have felt somewhat similar to how I have felt recently. My father had died a few years earlier and I had a son, Jonah, who was about five years old at the time. I had been struggling for some years to make a living as a photographer and unfortunately I was somewhat obsessed with my callings as a photographer, my hypochondria, the obsessive maintenance of our home, and most probably was extremely neglectful of my wife and my son. I worked at home, so I was constantly with them, but I am not sure I was truly with them. I was there, yet in retrospect, I was only partially there.
I couldn’t escape my own fears and anxieties, and though I tried to be a good father, I can see today in my own son’s extraordinary love and attention to his own five-year-old son (my grandson) what a masterful father he is.
I had taken one step down the path of life from my own father. I was more attentive to my own son than he, but still I was locked in my own cage of fears and despite the love around me, I felt isolated and most importantly as I do today, unable to feel the love or any affection for me. I guess I felt I just didn’t deserve it. I hadn’t deserved it in my mother and father’s eyes, why should I deserve it or receive it from my wife and my son? I was failing them too.
During this period I was teaching photography in Connecticut, and one day while driving to school some 40 minutes away, I was hit very hard by another car. My car was totally damaged and beyond repair, but miraculously I seemed to have survived this significant trauma unhurt.
I called my best friend Rob (who I will write about at a later date) to pick me up, as there was nothing left of my car. Rob was kind enough to come some distance, pick me up, and take me home, and this is where “thoughts that lie too deep for tears” are realized. Upon coming home and stopping in front of our front door, Jonah, my son, flew the door open, was crying hysterically and came running towards me with his arms out, hugging me as if he never wished to let me go. He was crying uncontrollably. He loved and cared for me in a way I was not able to feel before. And for a brief moment, I felt all his love for me come pouring out. There was no need to prove anything. I was simply good enough being his dad, at that time he didn’t ask for more. At that moment in time, I realized then, as I am trying to today, that deep down below all the humor, the hypochondria, below my obsessive diversions, that perhaps I am lovable to someone. My son at that moment had broken through this feeling and left me standing there in awe.
One of my worst nightmares is of me standing with a group of other men, completely naked in front of a row of women. We have nothing but ourselves to share. We have no houses, cars, money, power, etc., to offer, only ourselves. I wake from this dream terrified that no one would choose me.
This is how I stand before you in my pictures, completely vulnerable and naked, with a terrible fear, yet a small hope that in the end you could possibly love me simply for who I am.
