Family obscura

Getting a favor from my dad is kind of like having the mob do something nice for you. You never know when your favor is getting called in. For example, the mob makes your competition evaporate. Great! Business has never been better! Enough time goes by that you convince yourself they forgot about measly little you, right? Then one bright blue day, in walks a guy with a message that it's time to return the favor. You equivocate about it, you talk yourself into its inevitability, you convince yourself that you can handle it, and blammo! The next thing you know you killed a guy.

Dad wouldn't actually make you kill a guy, but in other respects it's kinda like that scenario. Dad loans you something, and eventually the favor must be returned.

Let's say Dad loans you a 30-year-old camera so you can teach yourself photography. You're giddy with the excitement of a new hobby, you're learning amazing new visual communication strategies you never knew existed, and Dad's just thrilled that you're getting so much enjoyment from something he doesn't need anymore.

So now let's say that you've moved on to 21st century camera technology (that old thing weighed as much as a brick), but maybe you still get out your first camera every once in a while and think fondly of the time you and Dad first shared enthusiasm about photography. Then, one bright blue day, Dad calls up and says, "You're finished with that camera right? I'd like to have it back."

You equivocate about it, you talk yourself into its inevitability, you convince yourself that you can handle it, and blammo! You're gonna have to give back the camera.

It's not yours. You don't use it. You don't need it.

My short tenure of sentimentality doesn't hold a candle to my father's memories of photographing his young children, developing the films in his darkroom, and ultimately displaying family portraits in our home. I don't know why returning someone else's camera is such a dramatic struggle in my life. I knew one day my dad would come calling for his camera back, he told me that up front. You don't get favors from the mob and expect nothing to come of it. You know what you're getting into once you've seen "The Godfather." And yet it's so hard for me to live up to my end of the bargain.

Each leaf pressed into the pages of a journal signifies something that needed commemorating specially. It's hard to surrender the artifacts of a relationship as leaves crack and become brittle. My dad's camera is like leaves pressed into my journal. Each photograph I took with that camera carried the story behind the artifact, but eventually I know I won't have the camera anymore. My father documented his family's growth and changes, and, years later, he used the same camera to share the miracle of visual media with me. I know I'll never forget that with the loan of his camera, my dad gave me a precious gift that is mine to keep forever.