Andy and Sandy

Nine pages into the album is the time during me.

I've set up the first page of my life with matched sets of my brother and me. One is a clearly deliberately set up by my parents to take the same shot of me and my brother, others were obviously taken on the same day in the same place and therefore make a matched set. As a second child, you never really think about this compare-and-match impulse of parents: this one is behaving thusly right now, what is the other one doing. Perhaps as the parent of siblings I've done this both to myself and to them.

Foolishly, I glued these into the album with glue stick. I cannot remove them without damage. In fact, this is the case with the next three sets of pictures, documenting my childhood. An interesting metaphor. I have glued my life into these pages-- you cannot remove me! Is this what I'm afraid of? Without the photos, without this evidence, I will be removed. But now, of course, I also cannot post them here. An entirely unknowable consequence. When I decided to redo the old album that these photos came out of I had no way of knowing I would be creating this journal. So my children will not be able to easily share me, they will have to hold me in their hands. They let go of me and move on, but the book anchors them in place.