Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Intimacy Like Riffling Through a Woman's Underwear Drawer

Saturday, February 24, 2024

With Niño & Niña - How is it possible I don't remember taking this photograph?

Blog 6025

There is a strong possibility that this blog will be a surprisingly positive and pleasant blog about my Rosemary and it will bypass any melancholic moments I might have had today that were exacerbated by today’s grim weather.

I am firmly a person who is a product of the last century. I rarely find anything in this one that can compare in positive quality. But I did today.

I will begin by citing the origin of the word intimidad (intimacy in Spanish) which is from the Latin intimus which means something that is at the bottom of something, situated in its most inside. Dictionary of the Real Academia Española.

Rosemary and I were married for 52 years, and before that, we knew each other for two months. In those 52 years we constantly surprised each other by stuff that we did not know about each other. It took Rosemary 51 years to tell me she did not like my “famous” cucumber sandwiches. It wasn’t until we spent a whole day at the Metropolitan Museum in NY that I finally knew that she had a tremendous interest in art. Because Rosemary was internal in her thoughts, it took me by surprise.

Now let’s go to that 21^st century wonder that I discovered today. In my Messenger lists I found 1. Rosemary, 2. Rosemary and Ale, 3. Rosemary and Ale, 4. Rosemary and Rebecca,5. Rosemary and Hilary.

Her conversations are much too intimate for me to place here but the photographs! Many times when we travelled she would hand me her phone and ask me to take her picture. Or there are pictures taken by Alexandra of Rosemary when she visited her in Lillooet. There a few selfies and many pictures that Rosemary downloaded from my blog.

In short many of the photographs I have never seen but important, too is her choice of my photographs from my blogs that she sent to our daughters and granddaughters. They represent a facet of Rosemary I had no idea about. The act of choosing a photograph is in itself an intimate choice.

Thinking about all this today with my two cats on top of me on the bed I had the idea that in some way looking at these photographs is similar to riffling the drawers of a wife’s underwear.

Rosemary kept notes and a diary when she was in Mexico. Important is the loss to me that she never did write about how we met. I will never be able to ask her, “How did I pick you up that day I saw you leave that school we both worked for? I saw you from the back and I was dazzled by your lovely legs and your miniskirt. What did I say to you?”

I will never know.