Photography

When my babies were born, people told me they were beautiful, but I knew they were being polite. My babies were born beautifully, but what birth did to them was no aesthetic. They were squished, swollen and bruised and not the least bit beautiful. Of course, now that I am a mother myself, it is this very grumpy, very ugliness that stirs the greatest emotions in me regarding babies, but they were not, for many weeks, beautiful.

I remember being given a voucher for newborn photography with the Elfling at one of those shopping centre places hawked by those that spring out between racks of tiny clothes and ask you to sign up for packages before you've even seen the shots. And while I baulked at the idea of the ubiquitous gerbera behind the ear, I allowed the photographer who was probably months older than myself to try and pose my newborn baby while she took photos.

And I remember recoiling from the hideous photos she took, displayed as they were on giant screens, at the thought of taking home photographs that looked like that. My babies were not Anne Geddes munchkins that look adorably smooth with little dimples in fat wrists. They were red and scrawny and smooshed. And they way she had posed her, it seemed to point to these things as flaws, as if to show how unbeautiful she really was. And so I bought none, and vowed never to do that again.

But as they grew, not just into their long scrawny limbs and their peculiar features, but in character and spirit that shone through their little faces and they became beautiful. First to me, and then to the greater world. And nothing gives me more pleasure than capturing that on film (or with many megapixels these days as I am up to my very last roll of black and white film). I love taking photos when they aren't looking and when they're not posing. I try not to line them up for photos aside from the standard sibling sets which are hilarious for how bad they inevitably are. I love catching a glance or a moment and being able to keep that memory in beautiful, delicate colour. I loe catching something that belongs to them, and not to a calendar baby, however cute they may be.

We were at a birthday party today for a little girl who has fought very hard to make it to the party which is never a fair thing for any one year old to have to fight. But hardest still, for this little tiny girl, is that the reason she has fought so hard is easily seen on her face. Her skin. Still delicate, but not baby soft. Not smooth. Taking her out is difficult because there is no normality, no hiding, no anonymity. It is there and it is visible.

And it doesn't matter that she has cheeky dark brown eyes and round chubby cheeks and a perfect cupid bow in her lips. Because most won't see any more than her skin, before they look away. Not sure how to react, or worse, reacting with distaste. I didn't shush the girls when they asked, because it was important to me that their curiousity not turn into something other than it should be. I just explained, simply, that her skin did not work like theirs, and she needed special medicine for that. And being children, they understood, and the Elfling jingled a toy for her, and played as she would play with any other baby.

But even at almost 9, the Elfling had questions on the way home, about how sad it was and how unfair it was that someone so little should have to deal with that. And she was very quiet for a little while, as she took it in.

I took my camera to the party, because I always try to, and the weather was hot and steamy and yellow. The end of Summer in a humid golden glow. And I took photos of the Possum as he raided the lolly table, and the Monkey as she swished in her pettiskirt, and of various partygoers too. But I also wanted to take photos of the birthday girl. So I did, photos of her playing with her grandparents, and when I was jiggling soft rattly toys with her to make her smile.

And when I opened my SD card tonight, I could have photoshopped them into oblivion, wiped away all traces of that which society finds hard to deal with and I wondered if I were her mother, if that's what I would like, and I knew it wasn't. So I fixed my light source and my white balance, and I flipped a few into monochrome because I'm a sucker for children's photos in monochrome. And I looked at the photos that came out, and I was truly happy with them. Photos of a happy little girl on her birthday, that looked like her. That had been tinkered with, sure, because a little bit of extra shadow and contrast can make a subject jump off a page, but I didn't up my saturation to where only her eyes were visible, or correct any of the shine from her creams. And I hope that her mother and her grandmother like them too.

As I went through the photos, I also found a few of my Elfling, looking ethereal and embracing her Rivendell heritage. And it was an awful day when I took them, where I cried for the first time in a long time and revisited things I thought were gone and buried. And I was bitter and devastated and miserable and crumbling into the cave inside my chest when I took them, trying desperately not to cry in front of her. When I saw her climb up onto a rock, her yellow sundress billowing lightly around her knees as the sun rays from above hit the golden lights in her hair. And none of it mattered any more. I may have plenty of things that are pushing my buttons and trying to pull me down, but I still have her. Embodiment of the Gleam.

Autumnal

I have dirt under my fingernails and my knees are muddy. Palms roughened and stained. I smell of pennyroyal and peppermint from where the leaves crushed under my fingertips as I patted the bare earth around fragile stems and helped re-bury fat worms. I have a cut on my wrist where the very old rose bush snagged me as I re-homed it out the front. The earth was soft and crumbly as I bit into it with the spade, deep brown and smelling of rain; the blade cutting through the kikuyu runners.

My passionfruit is lush and green and has begun fruiting. Ephemeral, delicate blooms and pendulous fruit that enlarge with every day as we inspect them eagerly at dusk as we arrive home. Tiny lemons are sprouting on the tiny lemon tree while the green tomatoes on the "chilli" bush are splitting their skins as they grow too fast. Corpulent and pale green, waiting to brighten and be savoured. The bush lemon is covered in flowers that smell sweet and tangy and perfume the evening air.

It has been a lovely, langurous, busy and relaxing weekend with much time devoted to lolling on the back verandah in the afternoon sun and sipping from drinks that warm from inside out. It was icily cold this morning as I woke under the blankets and little puffs of breath were visible in the thin air. Curled into my neck was the softly snoring possum while Bingley was jammed against my side - held hostage by Oscar the cat as he snuggled in between layers of blankets to ward off the pain on elderly joints.

The past few weeks have been dreamlike in the way they have passed. The days shorter and so much colder. The mornings so much harder to wake up. I went to Melbourne last week to celebrate the amazing achievement of a friend and spent two hectic days tramping around wearing black and feeling happy. Eating too many good things and trying on feathers and sequins. Drinking sangria on a roof top before curling up in my single bed in the middle of the city, looking down on the streets of Melbourne.

The weekend before that was Mother's Day and so we celebrated with my Mum by playing out in the winter sunshine and piles of russet coloured leaves. I lay in the sun and gazed at the ever blue sky and let the colour soak into me. 

Soaring on the wing

Tiny slice of Paris in Australia

Lights on the roof

Champagne Bar

Wandering along Lygon St

Add caption

Flying in over my favourite city

Last travel post for a while - I promise!

It's a good thing I write these posts for me and not for the internet at large, as clearly I'm the only one appreciating them! Our last day in Bangkok was sultry and steamy as we asked the Concierge to direct a taxi driver back to the tailor where Bingley supposedly had half a suit waiting for him.It was clearly not one of the more well known tailors, as it took a lot of directions and calls back to base before we found it. But once there, Bingley was pounced on and draped with bits of Italian wool cashmere and a man with chalk drew and pinched and tucked and pinned while I watched on amusedly. Assured that the suit would be delivered that afternoon we left the tailor and set off for Chatuchak weekend market.

This market is the largest in Thailand and sprawls over 35 acres with rambling alleyways packed with everything you can think of. It was stinking hot and being out of the sun was a relief as we made our way through the rabbit warren, ducking under suspended lights, and pointing out the weird and the wonderful.

Unlike most markets in SE Asia, most things had a price tag, and aside from some vague bartering when buying larger quantities, things stuck to their price. This was a relief in the heat where neither of us felt much like arguing about prices and could decide straight up if we wanted something or not. Some things, like the plethora of plastic fruit and flowers were easy to pass up, but the silks, mobiles, puppets and dust catchers were hard to walk by.

We managed to walk a good half hour before we bought anything at all, choosing to buy some coconut icecream to wander the stalls, before Bingley came across this stall selling childrens things. We bought shirts for the Possum and dresses for the girls, then now that we had realised how many Baht we had left in our wallets and how pointless it would be to change them back to dollars at the airport we began a bonanza of purchasing.

Lunch time loomed and I was starving, so we made our way to one of the tents on the periphery of the market and pointed out various curries which were prepared in front of us and came with icy cold Pepsi in the old style glass bottles. The food was amazing. I loved it and ate well while Bingley felt a bit queasy from a combination of the heat and humidity and prolonged jetlag. We munched on a giant curly potato that had been deep fried and then wandered around some more looking to blow the last of our cash.

Final tally for the day was not photographed, however we all had a bag full of loot and various sparkly accessories by the time the heat had reached saturation point for Bingley and we caught a cab back to our hotel where we washed up and packed our bags ready to head back home. Our flight wasn't until midnight, so we decided to spend some time in the Club Lounge before heading to the roof for the last lot of cocktails and Bangkok sunsets.

The clouds were beautiful, sailing past and veiling the sky beyond while the sun dropped lower and lower in the sky. We settled back as it got dark and chatted about the end of the holiday and the need to not leave it so long ever again between stamps in the passport. Neither of us were sad about going home, I was starting to miss the kids abominably and the hotel life after a while starts to feel a little bit like you're wearing someone else's clothes. It's fun for a visit, but it's not the life I want to live.

We left the hotel around 8pm, and drove through the streets. Overpasses on the highway still crowded with those escaping the floodwaters and a sobering reminder of the reality that we had cocooned ourselves from on the 34th floor. We rode in silence as we watched the planes take off and land in the distance, coming closer and closer until we were on the concourse and our bags were being unpacked by our driver. Standing in the brilliant neon blue lights and no longer being excited, anticipatory travelers, but instead being weary ones making our way home.

We checked in, ate bad food in the terminal and then wandered through the ridiculous, overpriced stores that repeated themselves over and over searching for a bookstore where I could buy a book or magazine. Finally finding one in amongst the Chanels and the Bvlgaris so that we could curl up outside our gate and read away the hours.

It was a long and painful flight with an incredibly short night as we watched the inflight movie and tried to doze sitting upright. Dreaming of days when we could afford business class and stretch out and sleep, curled up in blankets. We arrived soon enough though, looping low over the Brisbane coastline and coming in to land. Disembarking quickly, collecting bags and finding ourselves again on home soil. Bingley's Dad and the two girls were there to meet us. Excited and ebullient, chattering away so quickly that I missed half the words.

Then we were back in our car, our new red car that we'd owned for one whole day before we'd left, driving down the freeway towards home. And I sat back in my chair, leaned back my head and closed my eyes, wondering if I'd dreamed the whole thing.