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Aria asked if she could go with me to a wedding... when? 2-3 days ago?
Tada!
We met with a bride at Noor Hall this evening, to look at the lighting. I'm photographing her wedding there next week.
Aria was in her element, singing and doing magic shows (before tonight's guests arrived). She LOVES being on stage.
And they invited her to the wedding. What was I saying about Oman's amazing hospitality?
I vetoed it. (Way past her bedtime.)
But she was soooo happy to be included.
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The other night a rock hit my windshield, cracking it (just as a song played, "there's a rock in the sky").
Aria said, "Do you think that was a meteor!?"
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I'm loving her these days.
Loving life.
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"To all that will be--I say yes." --Not sure who said this, scribbled in my journal
Aria the Halloween-Vampire-Bat-Leaping-Statue
I emailed my family a batch of Aria/Halloween pictures today. I wrote, "Means so much to me... that she's happy, that my work allows me to be with her, and provide for us."
When I was four, my Mom was a masseuse (and single mother) in Los Angeles, and sometimes took me with her to work. I remember playing in the garden at musician Donna Summer's house. And sleeping in a huge velvet covered bed (of a film producer). I remember my Mom driving us through a "forest" in the Hollywood hills, and singing, "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" And being proud that she worked, and proud that she took me with her.
In turn, some of my happiest, proudest moments have been with Aria, while I was working. (Birthday parties and family sessions.) Her jumping on the trampoline, blowing bubbles, interacting with my clients (often making them smile!) Me--happy working--seeing her happy playing near me... (Like the shots above.) In those moments I get a "life doesn't get better than this!" feeling.
Tomorrow is swimming class, and I asked Aria to think of a prize I can give her... if she gets in the water and obeys the teacher. She said, "A chocolate coin! And... you have to take me with you to weddings!"
Well... No. They go till 2am. They're stressful enough... Wouldn't be appropriate. Sorry, kid.
But many of my Omani clients invite me to bring my daughter when I work, and ask, "Where is your daughter? Why didn't you bring her?" if she's not with me.
They view me as a mother-person first, then a photographer.
So I was surprised today when an expat client said to me (quite vehemently, and before she even looked at the 100 photos), "Your daughter was disruptive at our photo session. You should never bring her with you on jobs... clients are paying you for your time..." I dumbly said, "O-kay..." Not sure how to react. (Did she want a refund? A discount? Did she not want the pictures?) She was extremely pissed off, and as she closed the door behind me, I actually whispered to myself, "I am not a piece of shit. My daughter is not a piece of shit. My photographs are not shit." (And the client is not shit either. She's stressed out, had a bad day...!? I have no idea what her life is like, what challenges she's facing.)
In the car (on my way to photograph the Omani royal family), I mulled it over, and decided that she's right. I shouldn't have taken Aria with me to that particular job. I pulled over for a minute, and sent the client a text, saying, "You're right... I'm sorry."
BUT truth be told (and I'm a bit surprised at myself), my first heart-gut reaction was: I AM A MOTHER FIRST.
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING (TO ME) IS MY DAUGHTER'S HAPPINESS.
Usually (over the past three years, I can think of only 2-3 jobs where Aria "misbehaved" and disrupted the session, she, a 2/3/4 year old . . . and I was still able to get enough good photos) the mommy-juggling act works pretty well.
This is my reality. (Taken by my father/Aria-sitter, at an actual shoot. The family was just outside the frame.)
I don't remember their names, from that day, or their faces. Two boys, maybe? Green and Red t-shirts? Blue swimming trunks? Freckles? I don't remember what month it was, or even what year. (2008?)
But I clearly remember a soaked little girl clinging to my leg, chattering, "Mommy! I got all wet! Can I help you?" I remember the wetness swirling around us. The pressure of her body. The earnestness in her voice. Together, watching the boys jump the waves.
I often tell my clients: "It's not about the photographs."
It's about experiencing your real life. PLAY with your kids on the beach. (For real!) BE at your wedding. (Instead of just performing for the pictures.)
Is that a strange philosophy for a photographer?
(My clients are like, "It IS about the photos. That's what we're paying you for!")
I've had mystical experiences during photo shoots. When I've somehow seen into a person's core. I've seen pain. Seen amazing potential. Seen knock-me-down-beauty-doesn't-anybody-else-SEE-this!?
Seen spouses who resent each other. Parents who resent their children.
Couples who will love forever, and couples who will split in six months.
People who seem lost. And people gung-ho.
I'm not a businesswoman. It's hard for me to place a value on my time and skill. Heck, I just take pictures. And money is just paper. A number. An idea. (A useful idea, if you have enough. A scary idea, if you don't!)
Many people say I don't charge enough for the amount of work that I do (often in the middle of the night, so I can be with Aria during the day).
A few months ago, a client asked for a discount (before seeing the pictures) and I started crying, "I need this money to pay the rent! If you pay me less I have to work more jobs, and have less time for my daughter!" (Not to mention, sleep.)
Whaaaaaaa!!! (Sorry about that! Very unprofessional. I was having a difficult day. PMS. As per the pictures in the last post, I'm occasionally furious and over-emotional.)
A few months ago, I was distraught and suicidal, driving round and round Bin Taimur mosque, howling, "I don't know what to dooooooooooo! What do I have to live for!?"
Which brings me back to my daughter.
My only child.
A lot of the time, parenting does not come easily or naturally to me. I see women with 3/4/5/6 kids/pregnant and think, "I don't know how they SURVIVE!"
Perhaps most women expand with love, when another lovee comes along. Maybe they have love-overflowing, on tap.
Whereas I sometimes feel like the needs/wants of others (especially when they're saying, "Mommeeeeee!" and insisting it's morning in the darkness of 5am) encroach on me. Chip away pieces of me, till I'm afraid there will be no "Me" left. Only zombie-MOMMEEEEEEEEEEE.
But today, at Baby Sultan's 1st birthday party, amidst three (four?) generations of mothers and children... I missed my daughter. (She was with her Dad.) Missed her exuberance on the jumping castle. And under the pinata, scrambling for candy.
Was it better she wasn't there?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I missed her tonight, when I passed an accident on the highway. Saw a man on the road, convulsing. (Heart attack? Seizure?) Thought, "He's someone's son." Exhaled a prayer, "Please help him!"
(Help us all.)
We are not shit.
Be we ex-pat housewife, royal sheik, man maybe-dying on the pavement, or Frantic-Artist-Momma of a fearsome four-year-old Vampire...
Oman; World-through-the-computer; hear me whisper:
We are not shit.
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This Is A Dryer
(Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 2008, Previously unpublished photos)
This sink was to the left of the dryer, under a window, in front of a stack of old tires threaded with purple morning glories.
In the picture, you also do not see my questions. My waiting. My love for the steel, the tap-snout, the three drains, paint speckles, the white measuring cup and its shadow.
My love that there was nothing to do, but watch my clothes dry.
There's something about that sink . . . the light coming into the room . . . that I remember every time I walk into our big-house kitchen.
Today, watching a vase of parrot tulips craning their necks to the light. You feel it too? The gentleness, the hopefulness of the world-out-there?
I'm angry that I've been so busy lately. (Angry at myself, my own boss.)
That some days the cat bites my ankle (FEED ME!) and the fish shout in fin language, "You forgot our breakfast!" Herschel asks, "What's for supper?" And Aria says, "Bleah" to the tortellini on her plate, "I won't eat this."
And my clients hint-hint, "Can't wait to see our photos!"
Meet at Starbucks to deliver wedding pictures. Stare at the red snow-flaked posters. Words like "Festive . . . Season . . . Winter." And I am confused, lost somewhere last April.
But they tell me Happy Holidays.
My daily planner looks like it's been mauled by a class of four-year-olds. Green, Orange, Black & Blue ink, arrows and cross-outs, to-do lists, jobs, play dates, parties.
I peer at it. What the . . . ?
Look desperately for blank squares. For time marked SLEEP and WRITE and ANNA TIME-OFF.
But the blank squares mean no-money, which means no-New-Mexico, which means I'd better process 400 more photos before I go to bed (okay, at least 200), because I am scared of not-being-loved and never-having-sex and becoming-old, in this desert.
Don't misunderstand me.
I'm happy that I'm a "good Mommy."
Happy I'm a "good Photographer."
(And that there's plenty of work in Oman! Thank you Daughter/God/Allah/Universe/Camera.)
Generally, happy.
(Now WRITING happy!)
But as I said to my clients (We're back at Starbucks, viewing their photos. "Ethereal!" says the bride. Or is it "Surreal!" Drinking orange juice. Aria on my lap, intermittently coloring and trying to repossess the computer.) "Wedding photography is not my . . . calling. I do it, but I don't love it . . . "
(The stress, the 2am-ness, the matrimony of it all...)
I joke, "But I'm grateful, glad I'm not a street-sweeper (Indian man in orange jump-suit, I see picking up trash in the streets at 2am, and 6am) or a poop-truck driver! Taking pictures is much better than that!"
And I realize I sound like a lunatic, and this is NOT what you should tell your clients. (Which will probably evolve into some strange rumor that I'm eloping with a poop-truck-driver.)
And I ask myself, "Is it really TRUE you don't love photographing weddings? Why don't you stop saying that, and practice loving what you do?"
Okay... I love the flowers, the music, the dancing, the wowie-omg outfits the women wear. I love dramatic lighting, so I don't have to use flash.
I love it when I can see LOVE, between people. Men and women. Families.
Perhaps I'm scared?
That strangers are pledging "forever." That so much meaning and importance is placed upon this dress, this ring, this veil. THIS PHOTOGRAPH.
(And I have a niggling feeling that almost anyone could take "this photograph", but only I can be Mom-of-Aria and Author-of-my-book.)
I tell the clients I'm leaving next summer, and they say, "We're glad you were here to do our pictures!"
I'm glad, too.
Oh-beautiful-and-brave-people, I'm glad I have weddings booked through next June.
And in America? Will I be a wedding photographer? A successful writer? (And/or a waitress? Put food on tables?)
I ask the sink. The light. The tulips.
The tumble dryer.
My photographs.
Can you see the future?
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I just slept 13 hours. And feel like I need 13 more.
I've been doing the old four-hours-of-sleep-a-night trick, trying to get caught up on my photo work SO I CAN WRITE.
These mornings of waking at 6am to get Aria to school... Grrrrrrr...
Today: I will not take or process ANY photos.
I will ponder the dog. Who is chewing on a pair of scissors (after harking around all morning with a rubber princess pencil hanging out her mouth, leaving a splinter trail in the vacuum's wake).
I will remember the melancholy owl-boy in spandex, who trusted me with his life yesterday, across the shallow end of the pool (which came to his chin). And my child (the only one in her class) who refused to swim. Who doesn't like the tiles.
"Mommy, why don't you come help at my school like the other Mommies and Daddies?"
So, last week, I did cooking. Deviled eggs and fruit kebabs. Amazed by these four-year-old personalities cracking (mashing, devouring) eggs. Spearing pineapple chunks.
And navigating vast quantities of chlorine. On foam noodles. (Swimming, every Wednesday at 9:30am.)
Quivering lips and stoicism.
I started reading "Truth and Beauty", by Ann Patchett, last night (having completed the day's Photoshop marathon, which started at 4am).
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Excerpts: (Which make me cry because, "I am a writer tooooooo!")
"Without writing, I was another waitress like all the other waitresses in Nashville who were waiting for their big publishing deal. They wrote songs. I wanted to write a novel. I was starting to see it was all pretty much the same thing. Lucy and I had ceased to be distinguishable from everyone else and every day the ground was getting softer, swallowing us up a little bit more. We had each come to realize that no one was going to save our lives, and that if we wanted to save them ourselves, we only had one skill that afforded us any hope at all. Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also a place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon. In her hospital bed or in her lonesome room back in her flat, Lucy brought out the sentences she knew and twisted them into poems and chapters, the same way I stood in the kitchen every night at the end of my shift at Friday's and rolled 150 silverware packets, dreaming up characters with problems more beautiful and insurmountable than my own." (p 62, 63)
"I walked on the beach in the morning in the freezing wind and rain, cultivating a kind of insanity wherein people who do not actually exist start talking to you. For the first time in my life, I thought about dying and thought that it would be an awful thing, to step accidentally off a curb and into a speeding car, because if I were to go I would take the entire cast with me. Half a manuscript for a first novel that has no author to finish it is always thrown away. The thought of all of them lost panicked me in a way that thoughts of my own death never had before. I had come to believe in these people, and they deserved their ending." (p 86)
"There on Scottish TV in the dead of night was Allan Gurganus, talking about the publication of his first novel, 'Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All'. Allan had been my most important teacher in college. He was the person who had taught me to write. Now he was there in the living room in Aberdeen, handsome in his bow tie, calmly discussing his life as a writer. I was exhausted and running a fever. By the orange coiled light of the electric heater I felt like I was having a visitation from the Angel of Fiction. I decided then and there that I would be like Lucy. I would be like Allan. I vowed that I would write my way into another life. I, too, would try for everything." (p 70, 71)
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...write my way into another life...
That's my intention.
I will find a way.
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