Louis and I have been going to Cape Cod every year since before we had kids and I've been going a couple of years more than that. It has had such an enormous impact on our lives, Caden has only just stopped asking, "when are we going to my Cape Cod?" When our kids were scared at night and couldn't go to sleep we soothed them with dreams of the beach and our summers on the Cape. It is more than a two- or three-week place we visit once a year, it is a whole year experience.
I wanted to make a photo book, not a scrapbook but a real dust-jacket wrapped, bound and published keepsake, for my family. While going through my digital and analog files over the winter I realized that I have oodles of photos of my children, as well as sea, sand and gorgeous gardens, but I do not have many of the places we go or all the things we do!
I've lost all of the context.
How could this be possible? I have been scrapbooking for almost a decade and taking photos forever. How did I miss taking photos of:
The Cape Playhouse
Captain Frosty's
The Ice Cream Smuggler
Gina's By The Sea
The Brewster General Store
Monomoy Sea Camp
Dennis Pines and Dennis Highlands
Cape Cod Mall
The Posh Shopping at Osterville
The drug store we bought all those Beanie Babies we couldn't get in Canada
The liquor store we bought all that Ten Cane Rum we can't get in Canada
The worlds best scrapbook store ever in Hyannis
The whale watching boat in Provincetown
The baseball diamond in Chatham or Dennis
The Dennis Market
The little clam shack at Sesuit Harbour
The fascinating decor at the Blue Moon restaurant
The Armchair Bookstore
The library where I used to go to get online
The Mercantile where my dad goes to buy morning muffins
The place Louis goes to get our cappuccino
The candy store in Chatham
The Impudent Oyster
Cuffy's Warehouse Store!
I realized I missed taking all of those photos because I took it for granted that we would always take our kids to Cape Cod for their summer holidays. I also missed much because for years the priority was the diaper bag, not the camera bag.
Things have changed so much over the years, there is no way to go back and recapture those old spots, but maybe I can go to all of those places and document what they are now. Maybe we will continue to go to Cape Cod forever, and who knows, maybe my memory will fade and I will remember these places as they are represented in the photos I take now.
As winter fades, I'm really looking forward to our drive to the sea.
Typing these thoughts out has also brought to my attention that I don't have a photo of things, everyday things, places we go and people we see, here, right at home. Hmm. Must fix that. Maybe in my upcoming Week In The Life project?
Do you, like me, take for granted those places around you, the routine day-to-day places you go? Are they important to capture? Or is it enough to capture the faces of your children without the context? Without the who, what, when, where and how of it all?
