Yet Untitled Lite 012 - Whose Life am I Living?
Dad and Me: coinciding on two different timelines
Greetings dearest YU-ers,
I hope you are all well. Firstly a big YU welcome to all our new subscribers - a whole bunch of you dropped into our universe this week, almost magically! I am still trying to ascertain who sent you all our way, but even if I never do - it’s still something that’s chock-full of awesomeness!
This week, I continue with my shorter, light edition, because the days still feel like they have fewer hours than I thought they did. Luckily, I have a box of very YU-esque goodies to draw from! Some of you may have already guessed, this edition is the first that will use the treasure of old photos, slides and negatives (referenced in YU 43) I recently sent for scanning and got back successfully.
I spent a good part of my vacation browsing through this fantastic haul of memories and it gave me so much food for thought. Memories have been my text for a long time, and photographs constitute a lot of the script that my memories are made of - they serve as mnemonic triggers for clusters of thoughts and feelings that can become the ingredients for insights, stories…newsletters?
DAD
I lost dad to Covid in 2020.
This picture of dad accepting a dance from an attractive lady during his stint as a student in Australia (c. 1964 - ‘68 or thereabouts) stopped me in my tracks. I felt as if I’d seen it before.
I’d seen it as a photo of myself, grinning a very toothy grin while accepting a dance from a forgotten someone at a ballroom dancing class conducted by an enthusiastic German law student during my stint at Cambridge (c. 2001-2003). Here it is:
Seeing these two photos together led to more connections as I made my way through dad’s slides. Every 10th photo of his felt like it had a counterpart in the photographic documentation of my life.
Perhaps everyone’s youth is the same. Young lads or ladies ask us for dances. We graduate, go on hikes, attend costume parties, go on road trips, develop bonds with our automobiles…
But I arrested this line of thinking. Something urged me to think beyond the nostalgia, sentimentality and, yes, the grief bundled into this exercise.
I’m glad I did.
Dad and I used to have a ritual - once in awhile, we would revisit his Australia stories. There were a pet ones that he loved telling - like the one about shooting rabbits at night, selling their pelts (a Shilling per pelt) and then driving into town for steak and beers. I’d heard the story about his solo drives across Australia multiple times! The fact that he as a young man had travelled so far away from home always impressed upon me.
I know these stories influenced some of my most significant choices.
One summer, I received an email about an opportunity to teach English for a summer in Siberia (ref YU 008). At that stage, it was like accepting a position on the international space station. I’m certain that my saying yes was influenced by the memories of that lean man bearing my face accepting a dance from that young woman in Australia in the 1960s.
The choice of being photographed leaning on a Chrysler 500 during my honeymoon likely was an imitation of some of Dad’s photographs while he toured the Australian vastness in the 60s.
In which dimension do all these photographic conversations exist? Are they only confined to my imagination or do they in some way mark a dialogue between my dad’s life - his continuing life - and mine?
In face, I’ve been wondering: Who’s living whose life?
My dad lived a good life and he lived it well. But I know that there were some hard choices he had to make. As the eldest son, he had to return to his small hometown in northern India and use his foreign education to advance the family business forward. Even if he wanted something else from his life, I don’t think he had the luxury of that choice.
Me - I’m was the third son with no such trappings - fleet footed and freewheeling. I could make that choice to leave that same hometown and make plans in ways he never could.
There were times when my dad opposed these choice of mine . He thought - perhaps in weak moments - that my adventures may amount to nothing. But no matter how protective he felt, I like to think that there was a dialogue happening in his mind about my being able to make choices that he did not have the luxury to make.
Maybe I’m the one living his life - a life that may have been his had his choices been different.
Maybe my living this life is him living it after all, as easily and naturally as two photographs taken 40 years apart can lie next to each other and feel like they are from the same moment in time.
Thanks for listening.
you look so much like him!
I too loved this. It echoes many thoughts I have about my own late father. My condolences on your loss.