Friday, July 10, 2009


Saturday, June 27 was Lauren’s 7th birthday. Many years ago I used to snap pictures of both of our daughter’s birthdays and the pictures rarely appeared in any of the photo albums. From the moment I started shooting colour slide or negative the pictures ended up in files. Previously I had printed the b+w negatives with regularity and Rosemary had put them in the three photo albums we have. We have one for Rosemary and me and two separate ones, one for Ale and the other for Hilary. By the time we got to Vancouver in 1975 the photos started piling up in boxes instead of the albums. Alas a project that we never finished.

In many respects this blog is a photo album and I can record here the special moments and achievements of my family.

Lauren was a precociously slow baby. It was evident she did not want to walk so she didn’t walk. She didn’t talk because she didn’t want to. The day Lauren did talk Hilary called us and repeated a variation of that famous line about Garbo, in this case, “Lauren, talks.”

My family has been unhappy in my persistence in taking pictures of Rebecca always serious. About a year ago, because she had been told about this, Rebecca said to me, “I want to smile when you take my picture.” I let her do this but I always asked her to be serious for a couple. Invariably it is the serious one that is the better picture. Is smiling well something that takes time? Can it be possible that when we grow up smiling is a lot easier than crying?



When we sit at the table for lunch and dinner on Saturdays (this is when Lauren and Rebecca usually visit us) Lauren stares at me from the other side of the table. I love that stare. She looks at me in precisely the way she looked at my camera when I photographed her on her birthday. The second picture, a most inferior one in my opinion, would probably please the adults of my life.