Repair
Grief compels me to revisit the landscapes of my childhood as if sliding back and forth along an imaginary filmstrip reversing and advancing, then back again, adult to child to adult, reexamining my family's history and the landscapes we called home. We were an imperfect, beautifully scarred family spending our days in Southeastern Pennsylvania. With our parents gone, time and distance find me further from this place I loved than ever before, so I spend time amongst the images, remembering through the photographs with context, new perspectives, colors, and dimensions.
It isn't the trinkets we had that were left behind that I miss. It is the place and those that have gone ahead. Repair is a metaphor for healing the hurts we did each other. Through Kintsugi, the Japanese art of golden joinery, I mend the scars of our landscape with gold, filling and polishing the wounds of our history. Yes, we were broken, but I choose to remember us, with omission when necessary, confabulated with golden moments as required, with kindness and an open heart.
