Slipping
This has been a year of some profound change in my personal life. My paternal Grandma passed on, I turned 40, and my oldest baby is heading to kindergarten. I spent days and days lovingly sifting through old photos, discovering what youth and young motherhood looked like for my grandmother, relishing her joy and beauty that never faded. Now I spend evenings looking at pictures of my daughter as a baby, shedding tears over the fact that I can’t hold her like that any more, trying to cherish every moment as she grows so quickly. And I cling to my own Momma, who lovingly and fiercely holds our family, and wish to be always together. We are all connected, like pearls on a string. Individual, and yet an inseparable strand holds us, tying us to the women who came before and to those after. It’s a beautiful legacy and it informs so much of who I am. Yet, I am my own person and there’s a tension - between owning the gifts I’ve been given through the women who live and love along the string - and realizing my own self and thoughts and passions.
In looking back at photos of my Grandmother, I began to revisit photographs of my own childhood – rediscovering moments of importance to us, and really only us. I looked at the beautiful outfits that my Grandma wore, and remembered how Mom and I always talked through and chose what we’d wear to special moments – we still do. The fabrics of our history tie me to those memories, and help solidify new ones as they form. They are a surface reminder of times that I don’t want to let slip away, a celebration of moments – the everyday doings that make a family history. In choosing snapshots of these textiles and enlarging them to abstraction, I am making my own voice and memory heard while trumpeting the moments and lives that I don’t want to lose for all of us.
Casey Sperry, 2023