Photos

Sometime in the mid 90s, I flew to Seattle with my mother to attend my cousin J’s wedding. I hadn’t seen J since we were children, but my mother wanted a traveling companion, the trip was free, and I was curious about Seattle and the four cousins who I perceived as being quite glamorous. At the time, my aunt and uncle lived in Bremerton where they had views of Puget Sound from their small horse farm. I remember it being lovely and picturesque, but what I remember most vividly is the smell of evergreen and moist, cool air.

The trip must have taken place fairly shortly after the suicide of Kurt Cobain because I recall asking my cousins if they had been to a Nirvana show before the band hit big. They all looked at me blankly and said they knew nothing of the Seattle music scene. I soon learned that not only were my cousins not into the grunge scene, they did not approve of it. Though they were raised Catholic like me, three of my four cousins had recently been born again and were now nondenominational, evangelical, conservative Christians. In other words, they were just like much of the population I had happily left behind in South Carolina. It was disappointing to say the least. If my references to non-Christian bands didn’t already set me up as a sinner in my cousin’s eyes, my casual mention of how J and I lived together for a year an a half before we were married certainly did the trick. For the rest of my visit, my cousins kept a polite and wary distance from me, which meant I ended up hanging out with my elders.

My aunt, who is quite thrifty and skilled in the kitchen, decided to bypass a caterer and cater the wedding reception herself. It was a significant undertaking, but with all the extra hands in the kitchen, she made it work. For two days before the wedding, al the women of the family cooked and then decorated the church. While I was somewhat bemused at the time, I’m glad we had the opportunity to stay in that kitchen for as long as we did. Bonding was had by all, except, of course, by the cousins who were keeping their prayerful distance.

The wedding was interesting. The preacher explained how it is a busy and confusing world and that cousin J, being a woman, just couldn’t be expected to process it all. Her new husband’s duties would include explaining the world to his bride, shielding her from its harsh realities, and leading her through it.* As the preacher intoned, “As God is to man, husband is to wife.” I developed an inappropriate set of giggles and was pinched, HARD, by my mother and an aunt.

The morning after the wedding we again congregated in my aunt’s kitchen. Along with coffee and pastry, photos were passed around the kitchen. Vacations, children, home improvements—there was no theme. Eventually, my mother pulled a set of treasured photos from her purse. There were oohs and ahs as the pictures made their way through the room. Curious about what my elders were so excitedly viewing, I waited impatiently for my turn. As I held them at last, I realized that rather than show photos of her home, husband, children, or vacations, my mother selected photos from her recent colonoscopy for show and tell. Yes, my mother not only kept the photos of her first colonoscopy and polyps (a full decade before going on to develop full blown colon cancer), but she carried them across the country. To breakfast. And no one objected. What does this say about my mother? About my extended family?

Today I noticed that my doctor had included photos of my “normal colon” with my discharge paperwork from my Monday colonoscopy. I briefly considered filing the images in my medical files. However, upon remembering the breakfast of coffee, pastry and polyps, I decided to toss my colon pictures into the trash lest I suddenly be tempted to pull them out during Christmas dinner.


*They divorced after only two years, which tells me that cousin J must have wised up.