Category Archives: Family

Little Things

Posted by dkrashb on

We have just returned from our annual trek to Portland, Oregon to visit my dad and his wife.  We made this a relatively low-key trip.  In the past, we’ve taken longer trips to Portland to allow time to meet our friends in Seattle and do things like take a side trip to Olympic National Park in Washington or spend a week in Glacier National Park.

This time, we spent a lot of time debating if there was a way to go to Portland with Tisen.

The reality was that we would need to spend 6 days driving if we didn’t fly and there was no way I was going to load Tisen into the cargo hold of a plane.  If we were going to take 6 days to drive to Portland, I wanted to make it an adventure through Yellow Stone–a place I have yet to go.  But, neither Pat nor I could afford to take that kind of time off work.

In the end, we opted for asking our friends to watch Tisen and keeping our trip short.  Our friends from Seattle offered to come down to Portland to spend a day with us so we didn’t have to take 2 or more days to see them.  My dad didn’t plan any multi-day side trips; we would have plenty of flexibility in our schedule to visit with our friends.

So, last Monday morning, the alarm went off at 4:00AM and I hopped out of bed like that was the time I got up every day.  By 5:45AM, Tisen was fed and walked and we were packed and ready to roll.  Tisen excitedly ran for the van just sure he was going on a new adventure with us.  I had a hard time dropping him off at our friends’ house.

We made it to Portland a little early and by 2PM were sitting in my dad’s family room with full bellies (having stopped for lunch on the way from the airport) and suffering from only mild separation anxiety.

It felt good to just sit and hang out, catching up.  I, of course, got out my camera and started looking for things to shoot.

Pat sat across from me with his feet up on a foot rest.  I noticed for the first time that his shoes, which he has had for at least a couple of years, have outlines of the shoemakers on the soles.  I couldn’t resist trying to shoot the soles of his shoes.

Then, my dad was telling a story and chuckling.  I had to capture some of his facial expressions (although most of them didn’t come out so flattering).

Finally, I put my macro lens on my camera and went out to the garden.  My dad’s wife is an amazing gardener and can always be counted on to have beautiful flowers.  Although the surprisingly cool temperatures sent be back inside after only shooting a couple of flowers.

Therapy Dog

Posted by dkrashb on

There are many reasons to love dogs.  Each dog has his or her own unique personality.  Since I was revisiting old photos recently, I discovered this set of not-so-great-shots of one of the best dogs ever, Bogart.

Unfortunately, Bogart is no longer with us.  But, for over half of his life, he acted as a therapy dog at the assisted living facility where my aunt lived for the last 6 years of her life.

Bogart went to visit every two weeks.  We would sit in the common area outside the dining room at lunch time on Sundays.  As the residents would come out of the dining room, they would stop and pet Bogart.  As a therapy dog, Bogart’s job was to look cute, be calm, and accept love and affection from anyone who wanted to offer it.  He was really good at his job.

Because many of the residents suffered from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the conversation was the same every two weeks:

“Oh, my!  I’ve never seen such a big dog!  How much does he weight?”

“He has gray on his face–how old is he?”

“What’s his name?”

“How much does he eat?”

These questions were typically repeated about every 3 minutes by each resident.  I went mentally prepared to repeat the answers endlessly with a tone of voice that sounded like I’d never been asked those questions before.  I concentrated on how much they loved my dog and how much joy he brought to them–that made irritation impossible.

Interestingly, my aunt had always been afraid of Bogart prior to his visits.  I don’t know if she just forgot her fear as part of the process of dementia or if seeing others enjoy petting him made her feel proud that he was there to see her and she wanted to claim him.  Whatever the reason, she went from only being comfortable looking at him from a distance to enjoying sitting right next to him and petting his head.

There was one lady in particular who loved Bogart.  I always thought she would be able to remember him because she loved him so much.  And she did remember him sometimes.  But if she missed one of his visits, we would start over the next time we came in.  Although, there is something to be said for being able to be joyfully surprised by the same thing over and over again.

Bogart clearly knew the people.  He knew who was comfortable enough with him that he could stick his giant head in their lap, who was nervous and preferred if he kept his distance, and who would figure out a way to rub his belly, even if it meant they would need to sit in a chair and use their foot because they couldn’t bend over so well.

It made visits with my aunt something I looked forward to–Bogart was quite the ambassador.

Nostalgia

Posted by dkrashb on

One of the hazards of having a 2TB hard drive is the immediate accessibility of old photos.  There is something about fall that causes me to review.  With 9 years of photos on my hard drive, this can be quite a journey.

Along with review comes a sense of nostalgia.  As much as I appreciate my new life in Chattanooga, there are things I miss about my old life in Columbus, Ohio.

I try not to think about how much I miss my friends.  Although I have made a dozen or so friends in Chattanooga now and I would miss them, too, I don’t find that friends are replaceable or interchangeable.  Each is a unique relationship and each relationship is something I value.

I don’t need old photos to remind me how much I miss my friends.  What the photos do remind me of is there are other aspects of my old life that I miss as well.  Being within an easy 1/2 day’s drive of family is a big one.  Going from a 3 hour drive to a 7 and 10 hour drive is a big difference in how frequently we see family.

But there are small things I miss as well.  For example, I miss my gallery wall from our former living room.  Given that we somehow lost the prints on that wall in one of the two moves after selling the house, I miss the art as much as the wall to display it on.  It was one of those little pleasures I enjoyed everyday.

I also miss playing in the snow.  Although, I guess I would have missed that had we still been in Columbus this past winter given it was unusually warm.

Perhaps a bigger gap for me is the feeling of being part of the community.  Although I’ve found volunteer gigs I enjoy here in Chattanooga, it’s a little less immediate than being part of a neighborhood group that invests time and energy in improving the street we live on.

Along with changes that came from changing states, I also miss some of the things we left behind when we sold our house.  Like the raccoons on our deck that would eat peanuts left out for the birds.  Or being able to look out the windows and be eye-to-eye with birds ranging from Red-shouldered Hawks to Scarlet Tanagers to even occasional warblers.

I guess I am really missing living in a wooded ravine that not only brought the birds up close to our windows, but also allowed for a woodland garden, intense fall colors along our street, and a hummingbird nest above the deck in the summer time.

But even as I miss these things, I am also relieved.  After all, as much as I enjoyed life in the ravine and life in the house and community there, giving up those things has created an uncertain future that brings with it a sense of endless possibility.

Last Chance

Posted by dkrashb on

Now that we’ve passed the autumnal equinox, all the signs that summer is over have become more prevalent.  Of course, there are the birds, having shed their breeding colors and stopped their incessant singing.  But, there are many other signs.

For one, the nights are cool and crisp, the air taking on a taste (or is it a touch?) that snaps as I move through it.  And the nights come faster, the sun setting earlier each night, while the mornings drag along, the sun too sleepy to rise.

Leaves have started blowing along the paths in the park, crunching underfoot and crackling against concrete as they dance in the breeze.  The leaves that remain on the trees have shifted from deep green to something a women’s clothing catalog might call chartreuse.

As I walk Tisen longer and longer before dawn, Venus continues to shine brilliantly as if it’s late at night.  Combined with the waxing moon, I find myself confused as to whether I’m getting up or going to bed.  With the morning temperatures calling for a fleece, I’m tempted to go to bed.

 

The pots of summer flowers on neighbors’ balconies have disappeared and been replaced with mums in fall colors.  Some even have pumpkins and halloween decorations displayed.  The stores have already stocked halloween candy (betting on compulsive sugar-eaters like me buying early and eating what they buy and having to replenish before trick or treat).

Yet, there are still persistent remnants of summer.  The Tennessee River remains the temperature of a warm bath (how I know that is a subject for another blog post).  The late afternoon temperatures still reach the mid to high 80’s.  And, on weekends, local families still gather on the sledding hill.

Just over a year ago, I did a post called Southern Sledding.  This was the most fascinating tradition to me.  It struck me as odd that up North, it had never occurred to us to sled on grass.  We waited around for 10 months out of the year day dreaming about when we could go sledding again, hoping against hope that we’d get enough snow over Christmas vacation (which never happened).  And then hoping for enough snow to close the schools so we could go sledding instead of going to school (which rarely happened).  Perhaps we liked the idea of sledding more than the reality of sledding and that’s what kept us from thinking of sledding in warmer weather on the grass?

Whatever the reason, the sledding hill seems to be more crowded now as if everyone who never got around to grass sledding during the summer is trying to get it in before the weather changes.

This is one tradition I have yet to try.  I keep waiting for someone to offer a class on proper technique.  I guess I, too, will have to try to get it in before the rains start.  Perhaps I will take a lesson from one of my subjects and wear a helmet.

Hair

Posted by dkrashb on

I had this idea for a blog post.  It started when I was flipping through a magazine at a hair salon.  I was looking at some trashy rag on movie stars.  They had an article that showed a movie star’s hairstyles over the years.  I thought, “wouldn’t it be fun to compare how my hair has changed over the years”?

I forgot that I’m not often in front of the lens since I’m usually behind it.  It was hard to find any pictures of myself and even harder to find ones that aren’t completely humiliating.  I also didn’t realize how, no matter how much I change my hair, it always seems to look the same.

I don’t know too many women who are so content with their hair that they keep it exactly the same for their entire life.  I know many men who may or may not be content with their hair, but haven’t changed their style since the day they were born or the day they first had enough hair to style, whichever came first.  My father is one of them.

Hair has always been a bit of a struggle for me.  When I was a child, I had a plastic bristle brush that pulled my thick hair, making it vaguely wavy.  I had no idea I had curly hair.  In fact, I started perming around 1980 and continued perming for about 10 years.  It wasn’t until I switched to a short, straight cut and, after 2 years of no perms, wondered why I was still struggling to blow out my curls that I realized they were naturally occurring.

I’ve been switching between wearing my hair straight an curly ever since.

There seems to be a pattern:  wear hair curly, wear hair straight, grow hair longer, wear hair curly, wear hair straight, cut hair shorter, wear hair curly, wear hair straight, grow hair longer.  Sometimes, the cutting shorter might repeat a couple of rounds before the grow longer part kicks in.

Can you say you change your hair all the time if you always change it in the same ways?

Well, I really changed it this time.  I made the decision to grow out my color and decided to pick a short cut to make that process shorter.  I picked Sharon Stone’s current cut as the example for my hair stylist.  Unfortunately, the stylist had never cut my hair before and didn’t realize it wasn’t going to behave like Sharon Stone’s hair.  I guess I should have known by now.

I did this in early July.  Losing about a pound of hair was awesome in July.  And it’s so easy.  But I had the realization that as the days get shorter, the humidity drops, and so does the temperature, I’m going to be cold this winter with no hair to keep my ears and neck warm.

Must be time to start letting it grow.

Baby Mom

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I love the photo of my mother in her formal.  It’s such a crazy dress!  But what’s most remarkable about that photo is that it could have been taken a few years before her death–she looked so much the same.  It’s hard for me to see that she’s a college student when I look at the photo.

I also love the last photo of her sitting next to her niece.  Her niece is older than her.  How many people are born already an aunt?  There is a story about one of her uncles, when in his 50‘s, out on a work run with a co-worker.  When he realized they were close to my mom’s, he asked his single and much younger co-worker if he wanted to meet his niece.  The co-worker protested that he wasn’t dressed appropriately to meet a girl.  The uncle assured him his niece wouldn’t mind. When they went in and met my mother, the co-worker was highly disappointed to discover she was an infant.

My mother was a beautiful baby with big, bouncy curls in her hair.  People used to stop her mother in the street and suggest she stop what she was doing and take my mother to hollywood immediately.  Supposedly, Grandma didn’t want that kind of life for my mom, but I suspect she really just couldn’t imagine it as a real possibility.

Regardless, my mother was a favorite.  An adorable baby surrounded by adults who oohed and awed over her.  At least that’s what I imagine her childhood was like.

Her cousin, Carl, was certainly a favorite.  I guess it was mutual.  The photos of the graduate are him.  He looks very happy to have been a favorite of my mother’s.

She loved her relatives, all of them, so much that I could only imagine them treating her like a special pet.  The one regret she shared with me when I was old enough for her to start to speak of her regrets was that we lived so far away from extended family.

She described her childhood as though the center of it was a door constantly swinging open as another family member came through.  My childhood was very much the nuclear family variety.  I tried to imagine a constant parade of aunts, uncles, cousins, and second cousins marching through the kitchen and found it vaguely disturbing.  I guess it’s true that children don’t know what they’re missing.

The first two photos could have been of me when I was younger (if I were dressing for a 50’s party).  It reminds me of when I walked out of a back room into the living room of my parents house right after my mother’s wake.  One of our visiting family members got a shocked look on her face as I approached and then suddenly, realizing her mistake, said out loud that she’d thought I was my mother.  Now, I would be grateful to look like her.

My Mother’s Mother

Posted by dkrashb on

I stumbled across these old photos I scanned into the computer years ago.  They tell a story of hope.  Hope that a person can start over again in the middle of life.  The first two photos are from my grandparents wedding day.  They were in their 40’s, not far off from my age now.

In all the family lore I heard about my grandmother’s history, I never heard how my grandparents met, why they fell in love, what made my grandmother marry my grandfather.

The story that took center stage on my mother’s side of the family happened long before my mother was born.  It was the story of my grandmother’s survival.

My grandmother emigrated to the United States either from Hungary or Germany–the family lived in both places–when she was about 7, if I recall correctly.  I remember being told she had about a 3rd grade education, so I’m not sure if she went to school in the US after she got here.  Wherever she immigrated from, her family spoke German.  I know this well because many years later, when she was losing her mind, she reverted to speaking German again and couldn’t understand why no one knew what she was saying.

The story I was told was that my grandmother had 6 babies starting when she was 16 and the last when she was 24.  2 of them did not survive.  When she was about 26, with 4 young daughters, she awakened one morning to find her husband dead in the bed next to her.

In the same year, her mother died and her distraught father committed suicide.  Orphaned and widowed and left with 4 young children to support on her 3rd grade education, she turned to the Catholic church for support and turned her children over to a home for children so she could work as a live-in maid.

I don’t know the story as to how she got out of that line of work.  What I do know is that her children remained in the Catholic home until they graduated from the 8th grade, each having to choose between becoming a nun and leaving the home at the age of 13.  Only one of my aunts became a nun.

However it happened, my grandmother ended up on the church steps in these photos smiling on the second wedding day of her life.  They were still poor, but my grandfather supported my grandmother, leaving her free to take care of my mother when she surprised them by appearing so late in their lives.

What this story needs is a happy ending.  I’m not sure that it has one.  I remember my grandparents mostly as bitter, angry people.  We saw them only for about 6 days of the year most years, but their screaming arguments were what we most remembered.

Yet, my grandmother was still quick to smile and laughed often.  Maybe her happiness just looked different from what I expected?

The Trouble with Relationships

Posted by dkrashb on

For those of you who have not been visiting my blog for long, we have a dog we adopted at the end of January who likes to carry squeaky toys with him wherever he goes.  Because he was previously mistreated, he has issues with food.  So, getting a new squeaky toy every once in a while has been a more effective reward than traditional doggy treats.  This has resulted in some unexpected growth to the family.

Many weeks ago, we had an “incident” where Lamb disappeared.  She went missing for two weeks.  About the second week, ‘Possum also went missing.  We were suspicious.  About a week after posting the story of our Lost Lamb, Lamb turned up again.  She was hiding under the bed.  ‘Possum turned up about a day later, mysteriously reappearing without any explanation.

Interestingly, since that incident, Lamb and ‘Possum were rarely seen together.

In the meantime, new members of the family seemed to be getting out of control.  I decided I needed to do some new portraits since it’s been a while since I last shot the entire collection of Tisen’s collection.

Unfortunately, quite a few members of the family were out in the car, but I did manage get a group portrait of Red Dog, Minnie, Eddie, Baby Beaver, ‘Possum, Lion, Big Dog, Duck, Goat, Lamb, and Blue Dog.  In the car were Squirrel, Mr. Beaver, Puppy Luv, Tiger, Jack, and Hog.  I’m thinking you can probably figure out which ones are which.

What I didn’t expect when shooting was the revelation of some really strange relationships.  As it turns out, apparently Lamb and Duck have something going on, but ‘Possum is not over Lamb.  This was revealed to me in the middle of the shoot when Duck and Lamb unexpectedly started to run for one another and ‘Possum got in the middle of it.  In fact, ‘Possum grabbed Duck by the throat and, had I not intervened, Duck would have been a goner.

By taking a photo of the event in action every few seconds, I managed to get 18 shots that I’ve strung together into a video.  It’s a bit  . . . uh . . . rough, but you’ll get the idea.

It was a lot of fun to be shooting and have two of your models suddenly expose previously undetected emotion.  Even better, a third participant decided to be extremely jealous.

At least I know where to look if Lamb disappears again!

Christmas in July

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Since I got started on our Jasper/Calgary trip yesterday, I started going through the photos from the rest of that trip.  Perhaps because it’s been so hot and muggy these days, I felt a little like having Christmas in July.  I don’t mean one of those silly secret santa things people do in July.  I mean snow, cold, air that reminds you you’re alive every time you take a breath.  So, I dug out some photos from Jasper on Christmas Day 2009.

Jasper has an interesting tradition on Christmas Day.  All the locals (and tourists) go to Lac Beauvert by the Jasper Park Lodge and ice skate.  I suppose it only makes sense that Canadians would have a community skating event on Christmas Day.  But they don’t just skate on a bumpy old lake.  They get out a zamboni and clear a wide path all the way around the lake–a single lap is at least 1 KM.  It seemed more like many miles to me having not skated in many years, but 1 KM sounds more reasonable.  They also clear 2 areas to standard sized hockey rinks and a 3rd area for figure skating.  The figure skating area is usually empty.

We didn’t bring ice skates with us nor did we plan to skate while we were there.  We didn’t know there was any skating in Jasper until we got to know a guy who had moved there from France.  We met him by renting downhill and cross country skis from him several days in a row.  He suggested that we planned to skate on Christmas Day, told us where to rent skates, to make sure to get them the day before, and promised he would be there.  He was a very nice man.

We found the place to rent skates on Christmas Eve.  When I asked for figure skates, they tried to talk me out of them.  I assured them I could handle a toe pick.  When Pat asked for figure skates, they did talk him out of them.  Apparently real men don’t wear figure skates in Canada (or maybe anywhere?).

We headed over to the Jasper Park Lodge in time for a Christmas lunch.  We sat in a restaurant in the huge, open lobby area and looked out the enormous windows thinking we should have stayed there.  Then, we bundled up and headed out to the lake to skate.

Complete with hot chocolate and a bonfire with people toasting marshmallows for s’mores, it would have been a lovely lake scene even without the surrounding Canadian Rockies.  Throw in the Rockies and the families with dogs running beside them and children in running buggies as they skated around the lake, and it became unbelievably beautiful.  It was Normal Rockwell in the Rockies, Canadian style.

And there was the guy we met renting skis, playing hockey with his friends.

I can’t imagine a better way to spend Christmas Day (well, camping in the Everglades was pretty close competition).

It Bears Repeating

Posted by dkrashb on

The Tennessee Aquarium not only offers a diverse collection of aquatic life, but they also have these fantastic river cruises.  Pat and I took the 3-hour tour (but the weather didn’t get rough) last September.  It was such a great experience, we decided to do the 2-hour version with Pat’s family during their recent visit.

In my mind, there would be a cool breeze blowing across the river that would somehow wipe the 106 degree heat away and leave us feeling cool and refreshed.  Or, worst case, we’d be in a cool air conditioned cabin.

Allow me to mention that when we took the sunset tour in September, it was about 30 degrees cooler and it was, well, sunset.  Between the extra 30 degrees and the very direct sunlight during the brightest part of the day shining through a mostly glass-enclosed cabin, the A/C had a little trouble keeping up.  Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that in September, there were 13 of us on the cruise.  This time around, there were about 70 people sitting together sweating.

The circumstances kept us from regretting that it was only a 2 hour cruise, at least.

On the plus side, we had a knowledgable and hysterical guide.  He kept us all laughing in spite of the heat–he may have missed his calling as a stand-up comic.  We also learned quite a bit–I think I’ve now been on enough of these tours and to enough historic sites that the history of Chattanooga is finally starting to sink in.

We also saw a lot of Osprey–something we didn’t see in September.  I was so excited by the Osprey that I stood up on the deck the entire time we were allowed up there regardless of feeling like a slowly frying egg.  There was enough of a breeze at first to prevent the sweat from pooling and dripping.  But then we turned around and the breeze died.  Everyone went below except for me a couple of die hards.  I felt bad for the woman sitting next to me when I finally returned to the cabin–I’m pretty sure my deodorant failed.

My photos also failed.  Between the extraordinarily bright sun (one of my friends recently asked if we were still the 3rd rock from the sun–I think she’s onto something) and the moving boat, I can’t say I got any really great shots.  I really wish I had one of the two Osprey chicks both fully visible, but I was shooting between people’s heads to get the shots I did get.  I’m thinking about starting an etiquette blog for photographers where I can offer my advice on tough questions such as “when is it OK to knock over a dozen tourists because they keep passing in front of your lens while a nest of Osprey is in full view?”

I suppose I will have to go on a private cruise if I want really good shots.