When I was in my youth I felt like I didn’t need a specific place to talk to God. I could do that in any setting, whenever I wanted to. I can still remember one very intense afternoon when I had that conversation while walking in the woods.
I still went to mass back then but I resisted it. I was impatient during the service, often glancing at my watch to see how much of the hour was still left before I could leave and continue my day.
I’ve grown much wiser in the intervening years.
I find myself traveling a lot in this season of my life and although I love being in new places and experiencing new things, it always comes down to this….
After living out of a suitcase, and being in a car or in airplanes for hours on end, there’s no place I’d rather be.
Home is where my center is.
Although none of them has ever lived at this particular address and two of my three sons and their families have yet to see the house in person, this is where I’ve gathered all their photos.
I’ve always been a reluctant portrait photographer, especially where street photography is concerned. Yes, over the years I’ve had to learn to pull out the extrovert in me in many social situations but at heart I’m very much the introvert and am often too shy to ask permission to capture a stranger’s likeness. Unless I have a particular connection to the subjects I very seldom include the faces in the crowds.
Perhaps that explains my obsession with empty chairs.
I like to think that the viewer is more likely to insert themselves in these scenes when actual people don’t populate them.
I did, however, capture these photographs of a family enjoying a beach in Topsail, North Carolina in November. Their relative anonymity also makes it easy to “insert yourself” into the scene.
In my own life, there’s nothing sweeter than my grandchildren.
And I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. I fell in love with my husband all over again when he became Grandpa Lolo.
This is part three of a three part series featuring a tour of the valentines I’ve made in the years since I graduated from college. This links you to the first post. This links you to the second post.
Which brings us to 2010 and a move back to Louisiana, which inspired that year’s valentine. Let the good times roll!
2010
We moved down the street the next February and no valentines were sent so this was included in the next year’s mailing. I suppose it’s 2011, after the fact.
This is part two of a three part series featuring a tour of the handmade valentines I’ve made in the years since I graduated from college. This links you to the first post.
Some years the valentine making process is easy, some years it literately draws blood, as it did in 2000. It seemed appropriate that the message that year was literal as well as figurative. Sometimes love is difficult and can hurt.
2000
The next year I constructed a valentine that was transparent, with each side different, yet the same, reflecting the many layers of love within each of us….perhaps also a statement about how we change, depending upon the angle we’re viewed from.
2001
My city has been gray and the skies have been full of rain this past week so because today is Valentine’s Day I’m taking you on a tour of my heart instead of on a tour of the place I live, as this week’s photo challenge suggested.
Back in 1981 I was living in San Antonio, going to graduate school while my husband was learning how to fly airplanes for the Air Force in Del Rio. I can’t remember why but one day I wandered downtown and had my portrait taken at one of those “old-time” photo studios. I don’t remember much about that day or why I did it but apparently I was left with pictures I then needed to use.
Enter Valentine’s Day. I do recall sitting down at the dining room table in the apartment I shared with another student and making valentines with a sewing machine, construction paper, doilies, stickers and those photos of myself. I mailed them off to a few of my professors from college and the former classmates I had addresses for.
1981
pauses&clicks 