Pixellated Me

That's me. A photograph taken by a ten-year-old child who loves me, my granddaughter. No ill intentions, just a photograph of someone she recognizes as having a great love investment in her. She sees me as a familiar, a face long known to her, someone she relied heavily upon as a child, since her grandfather and I were her day-time care-givers for the first nine years of her life, when we were between the ages of 60 and 69 ourselves. In all likelihood she doesn't recall all that much of the earlier years which were dreadfully difficult ones for us.

She would recall, however, with a great deal of clarity, should she care to call up those memories, the latest five years when she attended primary then elementary school, and even before that pre-school when her grandfather spent quite a lot of his time helping out, cleaning up after the children, entertaining them, helping in an organizational way. His face too is a warmly welcome one to her, one that nestles deep in her affectionionate memory of another, earlier time.

She took this photograph on a whim. It was in the fall. We were just preparing to depart for our own home, 100 kilometres from hers and her mother's after a visit. She has no agenda, she 'borrowed' my camera, the one that always accompanies these visits to enable me to assist my memory in recalling day to day, week to week, month to month, how swiftly she is maturing. Fact is, at ten years of age she is now taller than me.

At the end of every one of our visits she asks for a hug and when I'm in the process of extending my arms, drawing her to me she suddenly grasps me, firmly, and lifts me inches off the ground, triumphant in her youth. She has no trouble at all lifting her grandmother into the air, and holding me there as I protest; she laughing, me alarmed. And the ritual of picture-taking, as though in response to my own dedication to preserving a pixellated version of her at every trip.

To me the photographs I carefully tuck away into a preserved place in memory and on disk are treasures, precious reminders of the treasure on earth that this child represents to us. To her, the photographing of her grandmother is a momentary lark, just as lifting me off the ground is. Turn-about is fair play, instinctively.

Truth is, while I hold dear all the photographs I take of her and her mother, I usually don't bother keeping those she snaps of me. For the most part because my ego gets in the way of my consideration. Photographs of me reflect someone I hardly know. I hardly recognize that faded person. Is that me? I feel vital, alive, happy and anticipatory. That image is of someone who has seen many birthdays, experienced a myriad of events, most good, some not.

And, truth is, I really planned to write this little entry based on the most recent photograph she had taken of me, just a few days ago, on Saturday. I had 'written' a blog entry in my mind, as we were forging our way through the cold and windy ravine this very morning. Hoping the photograph was still there. I meant to dwell on what it looked like, the visage of an old woman taken at too-close range, only the forehead, eyes, nose and mouth - replete with rheumy eyes, broken red-textured veiny skin, wrinkles, grey-grey hair.

Only I found I had deleted it. Damn!