In February, Polaroid announced that it would stop making its instant film in early 2009. By the end of 2009, the polaroid cameras will be obsolete. I’ve seen a few people hoarding up the instant films in my local drugstore. Polaroids cameras and photographs may soon become an old relic in a museum, thus making the photographs more priceless and memorable each time we look at it. With that said, here’s the first entry to our photo contest.
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The interesting thing about this photo is that it is a rarity. I mean there are only about 30 actual photographs of me as a child from the age of birth until 10 years old. And more specifically, I have no photographs as an infant and only 1 as a toddler. But rather than use that solitary photo and end the story there, I chose this one.
My mother passed away when I was almost 3 years old. And from even before then, at around the age two, I was in foster care. The first home I stayed in was an awful experience. The days and nights were filled with trauma and abuse and It wasn’t too long before I was transferred to a second home. It was in this home that I had my first conscious and memorable experience of love between a child and a mother. Honestly it was a bit overwhelming at first, after what I had been through, to receive such a loving heart and loving place as this woman’s home.
Her name was Pat and she loved and cherished me as if I were her own. This photograph is one of about 29 (as I mentioned earlier the only other photo is that of me as a toddler) and it was taken on one of those old Polaroid cameras where the picture comes right out and needs to dry. And what I love about it, is the warmth I feel when I see myself, full of joy, in the arms of the only woman I ever really had in my life that held me and loved me as her own child would be held and loved. And the most difficult part of it all was she eventually, after almost 7 years of raising me, had to say goodbye when my biological father was able to take me back.
That experience, and Pat herself still have, to this day been an inspiration for me as an artist (musician ) and new father. In a song I’ve written about that experience and the sorrow I felt on the day I said my last goodbye to her I sing “I separate from your body, a passing smile wave my hand, there’s nothing left but a distance, and nothing more than a glance”.
And in the end what’s most memorable and inspirational to me is that she truly did love me unconditionally. As we recently were able to re-connect, after about 24 years of no contact, when she saw me, she grabbed me and hugged me for about a minute straight and in the midst of all the tears it all came back to me…… and it felt just the same,….. Just the same!
- Greg F.
