A pair of onlies
2011 - ongoing
When I was a few months pregnant with my son Del in 2011, I reconnected with an acquaintance from an old book club. She had just had her first baby, and I was considering using the same birth center. Her name was Ann, and her newborn daughter Violet cooed through our first coffee, and our second… and our fifth… And when Del arrived in December of that year, Ann and Violet were among his first visitors.
I left my job when Del was born to pursue my goal of being a photographer full-time. Countless days passed at Ann’s kitchen table crafting my business, while our babies played on the floor or toddled around her backyard. As they grew, we took them to the park, to get ice cream, to the museums. They were only children, but we did our best to let them work out their play and their fights as siblings would. We loved the idea of “1970s parenting” - putting them outside all day and doing our best to ignore everything except outright violence or blood. We’ve giggled through their shouting matches, applauded through their “mama watch this” stages, approved their various moneymaking schemes, fed them so many goldfish and popsicles, tried our best to keep them on the path of being a good person while simultaneously letting them be. We’ve only lost them once, that we know of.
And through it all, they ignore my camera for the most part. This work is partly for them, for some future day when they care to look back at the summers spent in Violet’s backyard. It is largely for me, a diary of gratitude for my friend and my son’s friend and a reminder of how swift and delightful childhood is.