Let me first start by apologizing to all my photographer friends, because I'm about to reveal why my memory is not tied to photographs, like so many others. I know, I know, I am in the minority,and Facebook is a perfect example of how important photos are to everyone.
The only camera I own is my phone, and I take terrible photos.
I've never been big on photographs to preserve a memory, although many of my friends are photogs and my husband is a great photog. I like photographs for a whole different reason, I like them for what they put me into at that very moment, I like the instant feeling, not the past revisited. Photographs are powerful to me for that reason.
Maybe it's from all the years of being in front of the camera, and knowing that the tilt of the head and a certain smile can manipulate perception, is what makes me a lesser fan of photos as as a memory device.I don't trust the posed, I like the candid..
I've never been a fan of reliving life through a series of posed smiling people at whatever event, it never quite takes me back to the moment.
All I think is, wow, they look so much younger, or wow ,look how thin I was, or wow, where the hell was this taken?
Now, play me the songs from that special moment or the perfume I had on or the smell of the honeysuckle in the woods, yes, I can be transported.
Or show me a piece of Tupperware...that's right Tupperware. I was cleaning the out-of-control Tupperware drawer during a recent kitchen re-do and I came across a piece of Tupperware.
It was the one my mother used to send me home with, filled to the brim with her special meat sauce,and btw, doesn't every Italian do this? It was the very one I later used to fill to the brim with my sauce and take to her when she was at the nursing home...we were big on contraband.
This piece of Tupperware must have been 25 or more years old, can you believe it? It was discolored and pretty ripped up....it still had the words "sauce" on it written in dependable Sharpie black ink.
It was orangish and had the old time Tupperware top on it, burp away....and the moment I held it in my hands, it sent me into a torrent of memories and tears.
It's been two years since my last visit with my mom.
I brought her the usual two containers of sauce and chili with some rice and pasta on the side. We were that family that poured our chili con carne over rice. I was horrified when I found out that not EVERYONE did that!Usually she would rip through it as I sat there, but this time she put it in the fridge and we just sat and watched TV ( I think it was Deal or No Deal) during the lull in action, she told me about her Aunt Jean and how stylish she was and her mother, how she died of a gall bladder gone bad...and not struck by lighting as my evil Aunt Frances had told me as a child.
A few days later, my mother passed away, and when we cleaned out her fridge, there were the containers, still filled with food. The dying seem to stop eating as if they know something instinctively. I brought them home and continued to use them, and as usual , I only put sauce in the one with "sauce" written on top.
Yes, we women write on our Tupperware ...and we have the quirky habit of keeping the birthday cakes in the oven with two slices of bread toothpicked to each side of the cuts to stop it from getting stale, which now my son reminds me to do with every birthday cake. We are training him right!
Chances are my son will write on his Tupperware and he'll have to explain to his bride, exactly why he does that, or I can explain when I come to visit with my container with the words "sauce" on it. Maybe I'll put a smiley face on it just to throw her off. I just know that the tradition must continue.
Sure, I have pictures of my mom sitting here and there, posing by the fireplace mantle, doing that Jackie O' pose, gazing off into thin air etc...but the Tupperware...that was the best photograph.
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