Much of what I wish to say about these photos is treated, strained in a classifier, its precious substance snatched and withheld for a later date. I have a desire with these posts to expound upon a specific musing that I had at the time of taking a photograph, but for the moment, you must forgive me when I speak vaguely. I have many thoughts when I make my way northwest. Some compel me with unconditional love towards my family, others sit in the dim exospheric edges of my awareness, and most still are quiet ideas that hide in deeper catacombs, and I dread those especially. Articulated or unarticulated, these daemons of various levels swirl into a concocted elixir that seeps into my blood, and without understanding it, I feel a profound sense of love and sadness when I arrive.
Blunt nostalgia is perhaps one obvious explanation, not for the city of Portland or Vancouver of which I have no connection, but in returning to my family. However, I can't help but feel as if I'm cheating truth by calling it such. The word "nostalgia" has been battered and beaten into the mud, and I am myself not free from that guilt, but if ever there was a word that so succinctly captured the array of feelings for such an occasion, it would be that acute homesickness; the pain of returning home, originating in the word itself. But still, my heart warns me that to call it nostalgia is to debase the feeling. After all, there are very few words that themselves encompass any such sharp thought, much less a multitude of thoughts loosely connected, and only through an incessant stream of paragraphs could I feel satisfied in my explanation.
I say this because I am keenly aware of the brute force of nostalgia that I am bombarded with on a daily basis as a result of my hobbies: my love for archiving and the medium of photography to name a few. And I have stood on the irreparably altered remains of my childhood home and wandered on the campuses of former educations to know its illusive temptations. But what I felt at that point in time was more defined and less reminiscent.
During my stay in Vancouver, my parents had the misfortune of contracting the coronavirus, firstly my mother and eventually my father, though he likely received it before. At this point in its development, my fears of its effect on my health were mostly dulled, but I had been put in an uncomfortable position where I had invited Sam to join me and apart from my own need not to miss work as a result of being sick, I didn't want her to contract anything either. My mother had already reached the later stages and wasn't considered contagious when I arrived, but my father was earlier in his ailment and in a great deal of discomfort. He was of course crushed that he couldn't see me, and spiked by these thoughts previously discussed, I would've thrown caution to the wind if it weren't for work and Sam.
Upon his insistence to see me and my desire to see them both, we arranged an outdoor scenario in the backyard. Distanced as we were from each other, the catharsis of being in the presence of one another despite everything overrode any oddity in its arrangement. Lucy danced about the lawn in ecstasy and we sat together peacefully in the haze of the wet spring day under the hanging limbs of the neighborhood trees. The dark clouds parted above for a brief moment, and as the shroud lifted, we watched the sun cast its dim light on the dewy blades of grass, catching the fragile mist as it descended gently onto the soil.
The irony of it all was that Ted had also contracted the virus and later began developing symptoms right as we returned home. In a sense, we were hopelessly surrounded so that any precaution was meaningless. But I don't regret those moments nor will I regret any amount of time I spend with my parents.
