Blog

Well that was a funny old time wasn’t it?

You broke up from school for the Christmas break and didn’t go back for four months.

The third lock-down and the toughest to date. Not to dwell on the negatives, this fine post-Easter holiday morning, you put on your uniform once again. A little older, wiser and with a bit more sass than before. Edging towards mid-teens but aware in the angst to know enough of what’s going on.

The first time we did this was your first day of secondary school back in 2018. After you gave me the OK to photograph this school morning three years on, little did you know that I quietly sat in your bedroom this time around, while you were downstairs. Getting the moment right and putting the camera on remote so that I could appear in at least one of the photos with you. I’m more aware than ever that I don’t feature enough in the family album. Just the one photo, bed-head hair and cup of tea in hand. Taking in the process of what it takes for a 14-year-old to get ready for school.

I’m reluctant to see that we’ve now fast-forwarded from April to July and you’ve one full week left until breaking for summer. But I’m not reluctant to be looking ahead to spending these lazy camper-van exploring days with you both.

Paying attention to the quieter moments in the every day of our family life.

Artifact Motherhood is a collaboration of artists/mothers from around the world. Sharing stories of the joys and struggles of our journey. Our hopes and dreams for our children. With little nuggets of wisdom here and there. These are more than photographs with dates written on the back. These are the artifacts we are leaving behind for our children and the generations to come.

Please visit the next artist in our blog circle, the talented Ann Owen and continue through all the artists until you get back to me.

A gathering to the sea…

The weather report said temperatures were dropping but the Welsh Government said we could go.

It was my sister’s birthday and we had not seen each other or each of our families for too long. West Wales was where we last met to camp in the late summer of 2020. This same campsite and the same coastal loop which filled me with every part of the same joy that it did back then.

Ladened with hot water bottles and the stainless steel inner drums of disused washing machines (for our campfires) we warmed by night and tramped around by day.

A circular coastal walk from camp, filling each of our souls and causing us pausing at different times along the path, to gaze over the edge and down into little inlets of sand accessible only by boat or wings.

This past year has certainly taught me to slowdown and lean more into my curiosity.

I felt this strongly at the point I pushed my camera into micro cave burrowed by birds, which entered via a grassy cliff top edge and exited through rockface and scree to the ocean below. Not knowing the view until I pulled it back out again.

I watched her with cousins, the youngest there, somewhere between child and adult, forever part of the gang. Yet able to lead in her own pathway.

Time to think, time to be and with those we’ve missed and love, in a place we’ve missed and love.

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.

Breaking free to the sea

With 12 hours to go until we could legally travel a little more than five miles, we rebelled.

The weather forecast last Friday was for high winds and heavy rain, but this was an early morning mission in the name of art, but mostly in the name of wellbeing. As since beginning this coast-to-coast project in December, there has only been one realtime visit to the sea. So experiencing all the elements the weather can offer in such a short space of time, I made those first few moments one of stillness and deep breathing. Inhaling the rain and blustering winds, life outside this did not matter.

I looked over at him with his eyes scrutinising the rocks, my seasoned amateur-palaeontologist, forever searching for more dinosaur bones and fossils to fill our home with.

This was a little part of the coastline we walked around, during our first date which was nearly 20 years ago.

Thinking now how funny, the only thought was that this would be the closest beach to get to. Not realising the significance until we arrived.

Much has changed, with more of that 400-million-year cliff falling away, us becoming parents and surviving a global pandemic so far. Yet little has changed in how we fell automatically into the rhythm of this place, each lost in what we needed from it at that moment.

Then the sun came out.

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, from A Gift from the Sea.

When the world stood still back in March this year because of Covid-19, many of us went into survival mode. Keeping our families safe and managing multi-wellbeing became the analogy of stirring many pots on the stove all at once. The added dimension for me these past several months, is that it’s the first time I’ve seen the shift from me knowing my parents have always been here to care for me, to me now knowing I want to give some of that care back to them.

My father had been diagnosed with a chronic condition in Autumn 2019. We’d already been through a tough winter of endless hospital stays for him and thankfully seeing him return some more to that unstoppable human I know. So there was no doubt that my parents would have to shield during the pandemic and that we’d be dropping off a weekly food shop at their front door.

On one of the visits my daughter came with me. She was blowing goodbye kisses to each grandparent on the driveway and became emotional during the journey home… “I just need to hug them, when am I allowed to hug them?” she asked through her tears.

Through My Childhood Window is a personal photographic project, a visual journal which explores my feelings and memories of each room, through a window, in my parents’ house. It’s the home that my sister and I grew up in.

I clearly remember the family bathroom in my childhood home being used as my father’s sacred darkroom. We’d all be banging on the door at different times, legs crossed and desperate to pee. To the the calm and concentrated reply from him, “just a minute, the paper’s out of the bag.”

My photography love has come from my dad and I still have the camera he gave to me many years later. The camera he made most of our family photographs with while we were growing up.

The stories from these rooms over the years I lived there, were never so strong as they were during these brief doorstep visits. I realised I needed a more focussed and creative outlet to journal these feelings and memories. A more tangible way of expressing some of the emotions we were all feeling at this time.

I was 10 years old when we took road trip across the US. One of the ‘build-your-own adventures on a shoestring’ my father spent months organising. I’ll never forget my mother, leaning out of the hire car window. I could see the look on her face in the side mirror, complete freedom. As we drove along Route 66 with The Eagles blaring on the radio. 10 minutes earlier, she was blaring at us, over the music, telling us to stop fighting in the backseat.

Seeing a part of me in the reflections of the window glass has been deliberate throughout. I wanted to connect myself from the outside into that room, as well as to them …this house is my second home in normal times.

The creative focus that this personal project brought to us, became a crucial part of our daily lockdown lives. I’d phone them to get their shopping list and during the call, we would decide which room was next, along with the memory I wanted to portray. Planning how I’d photograph them from the outside into the rooms upstairs was an entertaining process. Bringing about colourful reminders of my teenager antics. Like back in the day, escaping through my bedroom window when grounded for something awful that I’d said or done.

Decades later and the logistics of me getting up a ladder onto a hot flat roof in 30 degree heat reminded me that I’ve never liked heights! Overcoming this dilemma was a task my retired-civil engineer father quite enjoyed, while my mother decided that the designated rooms needed to be show-home ready before I was allowed to raise the camera.

Looking back on this surreal time I feel incredibly lucky, to not only have played a part in keeping my parents safe and well, but that they supported me and played the leading roles in bring this project to life. It’s become more than a gift of reliving some childhood stories. It has become an emotively visual journal in an unprecedented and historical time. A collection of photographs for our own family album and its future generations to come.

Featured in The Royal Photographic Society and JUNO Magazine

Nominated and accepted for exhibition in the Many Voices, One Nation – a collaboration between Ffotogallery Wales and The Senedd / Welsh Parliament.