Then and later

Little bits of New York keep popping up in my life lately.  One niece just came from there and one niece is there now.  Last weekend I was rummaging through old photo albums trying to find a certain picture and I opened up album and out fell a smaller one from my childhood that I had looked high and low for a couple of years ago.  This tatty album that lost its cover long ago holds pictures from my New York vacation around 1974.  There are only a few pictures of the city in the album, and a few more of some time spent at my Aunt Gertrude’s house in Rhode Island.  In the album I found a picture I searched for after my 2012 NYC vacation.  It is a picture of me sitting on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  My last trip I had my sister take another picture of me sitting on the steps so I could put them side by side.  Then I couldn’t find the old album until now.

The skinny snaggletoothed little girl holding onto her red socks and smiling for her mama doesn’t bear any outer resemblance to the much too heavy adult woman trying to look pensive for her sister holding the camera.  But the inside hasn’t changed.  The me in the picture on the right, the one whose legs are swollen from seven days of pounding pavement still feels like that eight-year-old girl in the picture on the left.  We share many of the same insecurities; negative body image, social anxieties, fear of pool drains.  Some things do not diminish with age.  The me on the right still daydreams and makes up stories in her head as did the me on the left.  And if I avoid the mirror and pictures comparisons like these I still feel just as skinny.

In the album there are very few pictures of the city.  There’s the one with me on the steps, one of the Empire State Building, a few of the Statue of Liberty, and a couple of a temple of some sort we toured in Chinatown.  That’s it.  Isn’t it ironic that throughout my life I have gravitated to art deco architecture, get teary-eyed when I think of the Statue of Liberty and ended up in a career working with international students, many from China?  OK, I agree those are far reaching comparisons, but something to think about nonetheless.  I feel certain my affection for Lady Liberty stems from the affection I have for my immigrant grandparents who passed her on their way into the New York Harbor.  Finally, growing up in a household where different cultures merged and another language was spoken daily within my earshot is absolutely why I chanced a career with international students.  I feel like I belong with them.

My photo album is also evidence of my life-long enjoyment of photography.  That camera I had in 1974 is probably the first camera I ever owned.  There have been many since, and I still enjoy taking pictures of anything I can frame in the viewfinder.  On my last trip to NYC I took hundreds of photos, not just six or seven, and I think I’ve improved a little.

It’s obvious I liked the Empire State Building even then.  My mother only let me go as high as the first viewing station.  At least I got most of the building in the picture.  The newer picture may be a more interesting composition, but no matter how I tried I never could get a good shot of the whole thing.

Look at this one of the Statue of Liberty.  It is a complete coincidence that I took the same picture from the same perspective as I did so many years ago.  I guess I still have some of the same thought processes as I did when I was eight. Back then I had to look through a tiny viewfinder and I often cut off the tops of things.  In this case it was the Statue of Liberty’s head.  Thirty-eight years later I had a sophisticated camera with a three-inch viewfinder.  I found the Lady’s head and gave it back to her.

I’m not going on a vacation this summer, so this short retrospect has given me a taste of one.  Maybe one day I’ll go to NYC again in person as I currently do in my daydreams.  Or maybe I’ll go somewhere entirely different.  There are still so many things to see through my viewfinder.