Photography

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything. ~Aaron Siskind

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… before I take my last breath on my last day on this earth – I want to know that I have made a difference and have left evidence that I was here. A photograph can do that… ~rallenhill

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Storytelling

The Little Old Lady on the Corner

This is not my story, exactly. It is a story I know, told to me by a friend, about a weekend in Cedar Falls, Iowa — a local celebration, the kind that small Iowa cities do well: a parade, food vendors, music, a full weekend of the organized community festivity that is one of the things Iowa gets quietly right.

My friend and her husband lived several blocks from the festivities. On Sunday afternoon, her husband took the dog for a walk. She looked out the window.

There was a little old lady sitting on the corner. In a lawn chair. No parade was scheduled for Sunday afternoon. No obvious reason for a little old lady to be sitting in a lawn chair on the corner at this particular time.

My friend went over. The lady and her friend had attended the festivities together. On the way back to the car, they couldn’t find it. Cars are harder to find than you remember, especially when you are in a city you don’t know well and the parking was several blocks from where you think you parked. Her friend had sat her down on the corner — “Do not leave this place” — and had gone to find the car. That had been a couple of hours ago.

My friend brought her inside. She gave her water. She gave her a restroom. She gave her a place to rest out of the sun. The little old lady — eighty-two years old, sitting on a corner in a lawn chair because her friend had told her not to move — came right back out to her chair to wait after she was comfortable. She was not going to abandon her post. The instructions were clear.

After a while, her son came up the sidewalk. He had figured out something was wrong and had come looking. She was relieved — and immediately worried about her friend. She sent her son to find her.

A policeman wandered by and decided to wait too. The friend had parked several blocks past where they thought. She had gone back to the corner — the wrong corner — and found no one. She had panicked. She had called the son. After several misses, several wrong corners, several frantic phone calls, everyone was reunited.

I ask you to consider what this story contains. An eighty-two-year-old woman left sitting on a corner by a well-meaning friend. Taken in by a stranger. Made comfortable. Given company. A policeman who stops his rounds to wait with her. A son who comes looking. A friend who doesn’t give up. An eventual, relieved reunion on the right corner.

Where, but in a small town in Iowa, can this happen? Where else can you leave an eighty-two-year-old woman sitting on a corner in a lawn chair and have a complete stranger take her in and a policeman sit with her and the whole neighborhood quietly organize itself around the problem until it is solved?

It makes me proud to be from Iowa. Not because Iowa is perfect — it is not. But because this is what it does when it is being exactly what it is. It looks after the little old lady on the corner.

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Memoir

I was an unplanned baby; my mother gave me u forf adoptipn, and my birth father was never toldmof the pregnancy. As an individual who was adopted never felt complete. Most adoptees are curious about the biological parents and want to learn why they were given up. We wonder about siblings, whether we look like our parents and the origin of our ancesters. My Memoir is my journey through life and my search for my ancesters.