{58} #thehomeproject

People rag on “kids today” spending so much time on photo-sharing apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook…but I’m mostly jealous.

I don’t have many pictures of my family or places I used to live. I’m not a photographer by nature and “back in my day” *waves cane around, spits phlegm* photography was an expensive habit. It was not just about the camera, but the lens(es), the film, film development, and having prints developed. Each of those things was a separate and often high-dollar cost. This is why people generally saved those costs for special events: birthdays, weddings, holidays.

I can dig up some pictures, sure, but they are few. The homes of my childhood traded ownership decades ago; my parents and many family members are dead; so are our pets. I don’t have photos of Poppa at work or Mother in the kitchen making dinner. I don’t have selfies of me with our dogs or later, my cats. My husband and I spent a glorious week in Savannah, GA on Christmas and I have no record of that at all. My memories are outsized and sepia-toned and, I’m fairly certain, wrong in fundamental ways.

Maybe the places and times I were a part of were not glamorous or photogenic, but it would be nice to have some memory aides around. I look at my friends and co-workers and the pictures they and their children take to share on social media, and long for those kinds of testaments to my long-lost lives.

I cannot change the past, but I can prepare for the future. I am starting a project on Instagram I have hash-tagged “#thehomeproject” which will be photographs of very small parts of my home — specific bookshelves, the pile of clothes on The Chair in my bedroom, my messy desk, my art supplies.

In fact, I’m thinking of this as an art project, even though I’m not a photographer. It’s going to be a statement about who I am and my life as it is being lived in this home as a place I will want to remember some distant day.