Oh I’ve taken a lot of photographs in my lifetime, and to a large extent they are in findable places and are carefully documented on the back. Twenty-four years doing genealogical research has taught me the importance of doing that. And I’ve caught a few pictures that I’m really glad I took.
The photo above was taken for a class I was taking at UCR Extension back in the late seventies. I knew what I needed to do and I did it. I would have liked the silhouettes to be crisper, but for a first try it wasn’t too bad. I’m glad I took it anyway.
This next photo was taken after our cat Cipsi got her first Lion-King haircut to ease her way into the summer. We lived in a place that had inadequate air conditioning, and Cipsi was one of those cats with such long thick black hair that her vet called her a bowling ball. The vet suggested we have her shaved for the summer, so we did. Jerry took her to the groomer while I was at work. When I got home from work, I nearly split a gut laughing at her. And it took our other cat a week to stop hissing at her; he was convinced she was an intruder.
However, there are a number of things that I wish I’d taken a picture of – or had a picture of that someone else took.
1) My first husband was always putting silly things on his head to make people laugh. One evening he came out of the bedroom wearing my “Merry Widow” on his head for a hat. Now for those of you who don’t know what a Merry Widow is, it was like a corset that it nipped your waste in. It was made to wear with strapless dresses, so there was a sturdy built-in bra which pushed your “bazooms” up into place. The bottom went down to your hips. There were plastic stays in it so it wouldn’t crumple, and then it was held together by lots of hooks and eyes. A zipper then covered the hooks and eyes to make the opening lie smooth. It was stiff as a board and really made your figure quite curvaceous in a gown. When Joe came out of the bedroom wearing it on his head, he’d placed the bra cups like umbrella shades over his eyes. The rest of the Merry Widow went straight up into the air like a stovepipe. He walked nonchalantly out into the living room without saying a thing. The kids and I took one look and collapsed with laughter.
I wish I had a picture of that.
2) The front door to our living room was oak and had a fairly large oval window in it. We also had a cat, Puff, who let us know she wanted to come in by climbing up the screen until her entire body was framed by the oval window. She hung there until somebody saw her and let her in. One time we had a prayer meeting in our living room and in the middle of a prayer I heard the cat start up the screen. The pray-er was pretty long-winded but the cat didn’t budge. One of the pray-ers peeked at the door to see what was going on and then burst into laughter. That was the end of the prayer meeting.
I wish I had a picture of that.
3) When Sean was a little tyke he was a very verbal kid. We lived in a neighborhood full of children and they ran up and down the block, in and out of each other’s houses. It was before we had to worry about things like kidnapping. One summer afternoon I got a phone call from a neighbor telling me she had just been interviewed by Sean and advised me to go out in front and see for myself. He was probably close to four at this time. I found that he had pulled the garden hose out to the front sidewalk and was interviewing the children as they went by, using the round lawn-sprayer screwed onto the hose for a microphone. Everyone, kids and moms alike, were all queued up to be interviewed. He asked each of them a different question, one by one. He didn’t run out of questions, and hasn’t yet.
I wish I had a picture of that.
3) In Orange County we owned a really neat house with a big swimming pool in the back yard. We also had a nice black cat named Sammy Davis III. Sammy Davis had a propensity for giving himself a bath while sitting on the end of the diving board. One day he lost his balance and fell in. In the water he righted himself, and with big round yellow eyes, he stretched his neck to unbelievable lengths to keep the water away from his face. With his head looking for the world like a periscope, he dog paddled to the shallow end of the pool and hoisted himself out. He was humiliated and we were hysterical with laughter.
I wish I had a picture of that.
4) I wish I had a picture of the man we saw in Istanbul who because of the rain had put a big plastic bag over his entire body, including his head, so he would stay dry. All we saw of him were two feet and two eyeholes.
5) I wish I had a picture of the evening that Sean and Erin, in their little pajamas, fell asleep inside their toy box. We heard them playing after we put them to bed and then when the playing stopped, we checked on them. There they were, sound asleep, crumpled on top their toys. This one is the nearest I could come to repeating that image.
I can think of lots of other pictures I wish I’d taken, but at least I've taken these.
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