Discussion Board #2
This is a picture of myself and someone who is now a stranger. I have not spoken the woman holding me in this photo since the day it was taken and, if we’re being honest, I was so young, I’m sure we hadn’t said much to one another that day either.
Both of my parents grew up in Southern New Jersey, close enough to the beach that throughout their summers, they would acquire jobs operating small rides and serving slices of pizza on the boardwalk. They had lived in the same neighborhoods for their whole lives. Gone to school with the same kids for their whole lives. And most of those they graduated with remained there, their whole lives.
My parents didn’t. When I was four, and my brother two, they decided it was time they pack up and move across the country to Arizona. This photo was taken our last day in the house with blue walls and green carpet. That is my only real memory of New Jersey – the clashing aesthetics of my early childhood home.
We didn’t have any family in Arizona. In fact, only my father had ever been as far west. My mother had ventured to California’s beaches or parks. Everything was brand new for them. The weather, the scorpions, the excessive dirt.
It was new to me in the way that everything is new to a four year old. I was hardly even aware of the fact that I had been on a plane, must less flown cross-country. Regardless of my oblivion, it was a significant moment in my family’s history.
I didn’t have a tragic childhood. I remained that smiling young girl in the photograph for a majority of my childhood. In this way, I believe the image “frames” me appropriately. In addition to this, however, I find that I have a look in the dark eyes of that photograph that shows that I knew I was loved. That felt loved.
Once we moved, my parents no longer had their network of friends that came over regularly. My mother had me a young age and much of my early rendering had involved multiple of her (and my father’s) friends. Losing that, we achieved a strange independence – where my mother stayed home while my father worked and we operated as an isolated unit. In a way where we didn’t know any of our neighbors and didn’t seek those relationships the way we had in Jersey.
While I was too young at the time to understand that kind of loneliness, I realize in hindsight that it affected our family dynamic. This strongly influenced my own construction of a functioning family dynamic. And this photo does a great job exemplifying that transition.
Upon moving to Chandler, Arizona, there are no photographs of me sitting on friends’ laps or celebrating holidays in a communal style. My birthday parties consisted of my friend’s from school and a few of my father’s friends from work – whom I had to introduce myself to each time. They never came around often enough to pay much attention to the children.
This transition was significant in a multitude of ways. While it changed the course for how I was raised, it also posed many challenges for my parents. We’ve adapted since then and I have two 11 year old siblings, who know nothing besides the hot deserts and six-person Christmas dinners. But now and again, when they begin to reminisce on our lives back in Jersey, there’s a hint of loneliness. A hint of regret, for leaving as much as we did behind.
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