Monday Listicles: 10 Photos

This week's Monday Listicles assignment seemed EASY: 10 favorite photos. Piece of cake, I thought. Simple. (But with me, of course, nothing ever is, dip below the surface I must, EVERY. freaking. time.)

Because for me "Photos" brings up my late father, the photographer. Heavy. And also I have such a hard time with the concept "favorite"... favorite for content? For aesthetics? And what if there is one more favored photo of one child than another? That just cannot be. My head spins.

So I have made a decision to STOP the torture (you're welcome) and state unequivocally that these are NOT my all time 10 favorite photos. They are merely 10 that I like a lot and that happened to conveniently and handily reside in my blog's web album or my iPhoto library.

Because I REALLY want to get to bed before midnight tonight, dammit!

So, in NO particular order (oh, this is killing me, but I will be strong and not over-think - for ONCE in my life!) 10 photos that I really like:

My Dad, Jim Steinhardt, around 20

1. My Dad as a young man. Yes, this is also in my sidebar. Here it is again. I really DO love this photo, as I never knew this young man. He was 43 when I was born, already bearded and balding.

My Mom, Sylvia Heimer Steinhardt, around 20

2. My Mother, likewise uncannily (to me) young.

July 29, 2002

3. Me, deliriously happy, holding Ethan on the day my twin boys were born. (Also just plain delirious on morphine for my c-section pain.)

The boys' first big snow day, January 2003

4. Me, Danny & the boys, out enjoying their first big snowfall. They were about 6 months old, and we were near zombies from sleep deprivation. But happy zombies, clearly.

"Mother & Child" 1960, by Jim Steinhardt

5. Yes, of course that's my beautiful raven haired mother and me. I think I'm about 3 months old here. Mom is 38. Still gorgeous, of course.

A bunch of Heimers, Ellis Island, 1920-ish

6. I love this photo of some of my mother's relatives, LITERALLY just off the boat, coming to America. This is two of her father's sisters, a brother, and their father, my mother's grandfather whose name she never knew, she just called him "Zayde" (Yiddish for grandpa).

Jim Steinhardt, 1961 by Bruce Steinhardt

7. This is the most amazing photo my father, taken by my brother who was 19 at the time. I believe it was taken in my father's photo studio. This is how he looks in my earliest memories.

Spanish-American Barber Shop, NYC, 1948 by Jim Steinhardt

8. A photo of my father's. Not one of his more famous or iconic ones, but one of my favorites. I couldn't tell you why. I have a print of this one hanging in my apartment. If you look closely you can see my father, fuzzily, in the mirror, taking the shot.

Lake Champlain, Burlington Vt. 2005

9. I love this picture of 3 year-old Jake by the lake. For a while we went to Vermont every summer to see my cousin Jess and her family. We haven't been in 2 years and I miss those visits terribly

Me at BlogHer11

10. And, just because all these photos have all been sooooooooo meaningful, I thought I would go from the sublime to the ridiculous for my last photo here. Have a laugh. Because this caught my eye as I was scrolling through my options in the "upload" window.

This was taken this summer at the BlogHer11 conference, in the Temple of Swag (I think the official name was the Exposition Hall). At the time Ethan was expressing his utter disdain for all things Bieber, and I took this photo with the JB cutout just to yank his chain.

But then this AMAZING thing happened just last weekend with Anna See (the blogger who lost her son in a tragic accident this fall) involving her surviving daughter getting to meet Justin Bieber on an all expense paid trip to to the AMA awards in LA.

So it is not a completely ridiculous photo after all, but rather, suddenly holds major significance. Reminding me that this big star took time out to meet a little girl grieving for her beloved brother, whose one big wish was to meet the Biebster.

So there it is. 10. Done. And it ain't even midnight yet. (Only 11:30) So, goodnight!



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Imagining the unimaginable

On Friday I received a chilling set of Twitter messages from my friend Alexandra:

I went, I read, I left a message. Words, just words, but they were all I had. No one could do what we all wanted to: turn back time's hands and undo the undoing of this boy.

I cried and cried for a boy I didn't actually know, the son of a woman I had never met. But whose words I knew. A woman like me: a blogger, a mother.

The mother is Anna See, of the blog An Inch of Gray.

Her son is/was Jack.

12.

Now, forever.

He was playing in his friend's yard. A back yard just a few houses away. Just a typical boy, at play. The creek had breached its banks. He tumbled in, was swept away.

And just like that, a light is snuffed out, a life is gone.

Unimaginable.

But not to me, the mother of an autistic son.

Tragedy is not distant, but in fact stalks me. It's the shadow that walks by my side always, the fear that because of his autism, because he understands the risks of the world so much less than a typical child of his nine years, my son Jacob will be lost.

Swept away.

That chasing a pigeon or ball bounced wrong he will run into the street...

That drawn to water, as so many autistic children are, he will step into a river too rapid, fall into a pool too deep...

That with his friendly, too trusting nature he would walk off with a seemingly kind stranger without a backward glance...

That, strong, willful boy that he is, he will loosen himself from my hand when we are in the ocean and be carried out to sea...

That, large boy that he is, he will walk up to an armed police officer, saying and doing something innocent but seemingly provocative when he is no longer a still cute 9 year-old but a six-foot-plus seeming adult teenager...

That, curious boy that he is, he will take one step too close to a raging, flood-swelled creek, and be swept away.

I know, I quake, that one short twist of fate could put me right into Anna's awful shoes.

So I weep for her, and for all the mothers who have lost their young.

And I hug my sons a little tighter, watch over them a little more hawk-like. Knowing it can never be enough. That the unforeseen moment of disaster can not, by its own nature, be seen, known, avoided.

But still, the instinct is there. The magical thinking: "I can keep my children safe."

But I live with these statistics: Autistic kids are often bolters, runners, escape artists. Approximately half of all autistic children wander, at least once. And the number one cause of death among autistic children that wander? Is drowning.

We like to think this cannot be us, our family. But it can be. In the blink of an eye, a moment's distraction; a step taken into exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.

Anna is an incredible woman, capable of tagging her memorial post for her son "thank you for loving us" as well as "heartbroken."

So go there, now, leave her family your love.

Write your own post for Anna, and link up here, where Kate of The Big Piece of Cake is gathering them all. (And read them.)

Our hearts pull toward Anna's. We offer words of solace knowing they can never fill the empty son-shaped space on this earth.

But they are what we have to offer her.

Our words of love.

Our prayers, from those who pray.

Our sisterhood, no less real because it is digital, ethereal.

As her son is no less real, now that he lives on in memory, in spirit, and on Anna's blog, smiling his incandescent smile.

Beautiful boy.

Forever 12.

(Anna, you and your family are in my heart, tonight and forever.)


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