Tag Archives: nostalgia

The land of giants

I remember a comic strip where a son and father in winter coats were in front of a house with big icicles on it.

Frame 1: The boy says, “Wow dad, look at the size of those icicles!”

Frame 2: The dad says, “They were a lot bigger when I was a kid.” And the kid responds, “Come down here”.

Frame 3: The dad is kneeling down, eye level with the kid, and the dad says, “Wow, look at the size of those icicles!”

– – –

It’s not always easy to see things from the same perspective as we did when we were younger. For me, I remember people around me being giants (in more ways than one).

My grandfather, Leon Bernstein or ‘Papa B’, was one of those giants. Last night on Facebook Messenger, I connected with my 2nd cousin Lee, his full name is Leon, named after my grandfather. He is my grandmother’s brother’s son, but Lee is only 4 years older than me. Still, growing up in Barbados as the oldest grandchild on one side and second oldest by 5 days on the other, Lee was so much bigger and older, and I looked up to him when we came to visit.

I feel blessed because when I was a kid, all the giants in my life were good to me. Wonderful parents, grandparents that spoiled me, aunts and uncles who treated my like their own, 2nd cousins who taught me football (soccer) and cricket.

Some people have to grow up with angry giants, and some with monsters, my land of giants were exceptionally loving and kind. I truly feel blessed, and I thank Lee for reminding me of this.

Photographs in my mind

We used to take our negatives to a film processor to have them developed. Then we waited. Long ago we waited for a week, and eventually that time was reduced to just an hour. We’d collect the envelopes of photographs and before we left the store we were going through our shots one-by-one.

This one isn’t focused. This one has a blurry arm from it moving during the shot. In this one her eyes are closed. In this one he looked away. And this one, yes this one goes in a frame.

I say this with a bit of nostalgia, for there was something I enjoyed about the process. About the not knowing how good a shot was until long after I took the shot. About the surprise of a shot being better or, sadly, worse than I thought.

Film also gave me something else that I miss. As a photographer using film, every click of the shutter costed money. This made me more selective about the shots I would take… and not take.

It is an odd thing that I have photographs burned into my memory, but they are photographs that I never took.

There is the lost kitten jumping after a minister’s tassels during a wedding. I was being paid as the photographer and didn’t want to ‘waste the shot’ since they paid me by the roll of film.

The shot I did not take of the salt flats of Utah that faded into the sky without a horizon line. A brilliant memory that probably would not have made a good photo anyway.

There was the shot I lined up at Pike Place in Seattle, of an older man sitting on the hood of a parked car enthralled in a book, while cops on the street behind him tended to a fender-bender. I can still see the image that I did not take, feeling like I was invading his privacy.

We seem so much more free to take photos now, always having a camera in our pocket, and not a concern of the cost of taking one more shot.

But of all the shots I didn’t take, the photographs that still linger in my memory. These come to me from an era when film was the only option and the cost of the next shot lingered in my mind.