A picture from my distant past

Flint, Michigan

I received this picture last week in a text from my son's widow, who lives in Germany. She must have been going through his pictures and decided to send me this one, since she didn't know who it was. Well, that pregnant lady is me, all right. That's Chris climbing into the back seat next to a laundry basket.

At first I was puzzled by the date on the picture, because (1) that is not what it looks like in Michigan in November, and (2) Stephen was born in August of that year. Considering our clothing, I figure it must have been July, and the pictures languished in the camera for several months before being developed. You remember those days, don't you? When you had to wait for prints that came in a Kodak package at the local store? How times have changed.

There were no seat belts in that old car, either. It had definitely seen better days, but I, on the other hand, was dressed and coiffed for a trip to the laundry. Underneath that top I was obviously wearing one of those skirts that had a stretchy waist and an elastic insert for the growing tummy. It's been a long time since I've seen anybody wearing one of those. These days pregnancy is not hidden; it's perfectly okay to show everything.

Chris looks so small and vulnerable as he climbs into the car. Derald had to be the photographer and might even have been going with us. Maybe we were going somewhere else first, who knows? I don't even remember seeing this picture before. It is taken in front of our rented home, where we lived for several years. Flint was Derald's home town, and the water back then was perfectly drinkable, and the city was a quiet town of around 200,000. I just looked up the figures and found that the population began to decline after 1960, falling to 140,000 by 1990. Now, since the water crisis, it's around 96,000.

Chris, Stephen and Derald are gone now, and I am living in a different part of the country, married to another man and living in retirement from my working life. I lived in Flint for nine years before moving to California. When Chris was around 12, he stopped living with me and went back to Flint to live with his father and stepmother. I was unfettered and began to travel around the country and Mexico with a girlfriend. My, when I look back at my life, I am amazed at how many different people I've been. By the time I ended up in Colorado in 1974, I had lived in many different places and felt homeless. Boulder, Colorado ended up being the place I would call home.

I found a career in Boulder and worked for thirty years at the National Center for Atmospheric Research before retiring at 65 and moving to the Pacific Northwest, where I now enjoy another quiet town of around 200,000 people, and have a comfortable routine that will continue until either illness or advanced age changes my regimen. I love Bellingham and its surroundings and have found my second home. Interestingly, I rarely think about the past, or Colorado, or any of the other places I've lived, unless I'm writing about it, or unless a picture from the past emerges from the ether, as this one did.

I've lived a life of moderate comfort, although loss and grief have given me plenty of challenges to face. But really, it's nothing like the lives of many I see every day, or read about every day. The world has changed so very much in the last half century. Just yesterday I watched, on Hulu, a documentary that drove that home for me: Minding the Gap. It was released last year and has received rave reviews, well deserved if you ask me. (The link is to a review by A.O. Scott at the New York Times.)

It's about three young men growing up today, and covers about a decade in their lives. The glue that binds them together is skateboarding. They live in Rockport, Illinois, and none of them have much hope of making it out of their difficult lives. One of them, Bing Liu, a Chinese-American young man, is the filmmaker. He started videotaping their exploits when they were in middle school, and followed their lives as they gained skill in skateboarding. It was all that kept them going at times.

It’s not only the glue that binds them to one another through tough times but also a source of identity and meaning, a way of life and a life saver. “Minding the Gap” is more than a celebration of skateboarding as a sport and a subculture. With infinite sensitivity, Mr. Liu delves into some of the most painful and intimate details of his friends’ lives and his own, and then layers his observations into a rich, devastating essay on race, class and manhood in 21st-century America.

In watching the documentary, I began to care very much about these young men and their lives. Keire Johnson is black and worked as a dishwasher for a long time before finally becoming a waiter. He was able to buy himself a car, and he describes how he has placed his registration, insurance, and license on the dashboard so he would not have to reach into a pocket or make any moves that could be construed by a policeman as threatening.

That got me to thinking about my own life, my white privilege, and that I would never have thought to be afraid that I might be shot when stopped for any reason, but that a young black man must think about that every single day. I don't know that life except through documentaries. But I have learned, through watching this one, how scary and dangerous it is to be growing up in the world today, especially as a person of color.

It's been a long, long time since that picture was taken, and the world has changed immeasurably. Now that I am in the twilight of my own life, having gone through all the heartache and pleasures that these three young men still have ahead of them. I am extremely glad that there are such sensitive and moving documentaries as this one to help put myself in their world. My own world seems quaint in comparison, but I am happy to be alive today, to experience the myriad flavors of the lives of others.

And now it's time for me to join my own circle of friends, starting my own Sunday, first with this post and second with my journey to the coffee shop. My friend Gene will not be there, since he left for a trip to Mexico yesterday to join family members there. John and I will hold down the fort until he returns.

My dear partner sleeps next to me, my tea is gone, and I'm back from my excursion into Sunday morning musings. I do hope that you, my dear virtual friends, will have a wonderful week ahead, with lots of love and adventure (if that is what you want). I myself will enjoy my routine and be grateful for every day and every week that I can continue it. Be well until we meet again next week.