Life Hidden in the Shadows

Shadows generate stories, and questions. Photographs catch many details, but not complete stories. With a shrug I wondered who was on the boat that day. For me it’s the shadows that tell a story in as much clarity as the remaining image. Shadows always make me personally sad because while they distort reality, they are as fleeting as life itself, and sometimes that’s all we have to hang on to.

In some respects, shadows are every bit as alive as what is living around them. It only takes a minute little cloud to erase them both completely, even though we are far more complex than our shadows. Life is just that fragile. It’s no wonder Peter Pan was trying to keep his shadow attached. It represented something I didn’t quite understand until today.

I spent several hours looking for one picture to write about because it was a powerful picture for me to keep and I couldn’t find it. Even though it was so personal that it broke my heart at the time, I still lost it. And when I found it, I discovered that it was my father who had actually taken it rendering it void for this project.

It was a picture taken by him as he fought to regain his resources that he and my mother had mistakenly given to the wrong sibling. I had not taken that image. I had simply cropped it to show them standing toe to toe in a hay field missing the point of why he had taken it, which was to show that he had not been a negligent hay grower.

They had worked so hard their whole lives as could be seen by their shoes so worn, standing face to face. As an aged veteran, outstanding in his field in patched leather shoes like those found during the depression, he stood next to the wife who brought him color, my mother.

They who had fed thousands with their flocks were left standing in the shadows of a lost ranch because of a small cloud who was greedy wanting more than all. That broke my heart even more as I stood by them being torn. Those shoes were the epitome of a family destroyed, like Peter Pan fighting for his life, not realizing his story was more than sewing a shadow to a boy.

Until I became a mother watching my babies age through life leaving me to stand with my shadows, alone, trying to hold onto my very own soul at times, I never understood how someone could fabricate a story quite like Peter Pan or the point of it in fact. Today was the day that I saw the poignancy of it. I became a bit frantic looking for a fragment of the past, a shadow. Any viewer will see something beyond what is seen in any moment of time captured in a photograph. But in time, who will remain to remember anything about what can be seen that can be forgotten? Footprints in the dust will only blow away in the wind. Who will remember them?

Likewise, life that is only captured in images and shadows will fade into a page of some lost and forgotten photo album, unless it is buried deep inside of technology’s cold grasp discoverable eons from now. And even at that, will it be something nostalgic that will bring anyone joy? Many people are noted for saying that if it doesn’t give or bring you joy, throw it away. Will that idea change in a 100 years?

But it also be said that if it is deeply nostalgic to you, keep hanging on to it. It is the reflection of life, a memory, and it doesn’t matter what the value is to anyone else. It’s important to you. It might be the thread that grounds you or even restores that precious hope in a single moment. Memories are what decorate our lives like the tree at Christmas or the hearth above the fireplace on a cold winter’s day.

I believe it was Joanna Gaines who said to tuck ‘it’ in and around other objects on a shelf, so you can remember, not as clutter, but as decoration. Whatever ‘that’ might be, it may be worth nothing to anyone else, but for you it is a memory. It’s part of your story. That memory has or had life. It is what helped define who you are as a gift to us all, as well as a riddle for the most important people to solve.

And what riddle lies in this particular photograph is gathered from one moment of mine caught while standing still: Only one seen in this particular photograph is mine, just like only one shadow is mine. Yet, two forms of who can be seen are of people I have given birth to, and I know their story starts. I don’t know their story ends.

“So who are we, and who belongs in the picture?” one might ask. Who cares for either of the shadows that carry the attached human from sunup to sundown, year to year, decade to decade? Who cares for the 3 whose shadows are mostly hidden? I do, but I still don’t know two.

Yup, today, I had the understanding of Peter Pan’s shadow’s truer importance: It reflected the man who tagged along as a scared, yet pretending to be tough, little boy. He knew that if he couldn’t keep his shadow, he couldn’t keep his very life. Keeping one’s shadow is very important indeed! He had to keep sewing it down or have someone help him to sew it down. Otherwise, he himself would have ceased to be.

Throwing away the shoes seen in the picture I wanted to use today, shoes once worn, were hard not to save. Somehow, I felt that if I could save the shoes, maybe I could wake up from the nightmare of loss this year has left in its shadows. Maybe it could have been some reverse fairy tale gone awry. You see, I have several shadow pictures of my parents, and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t keep them sewn together: One is now gone. One still remains, now alone.

And it is that one who is still trying to hang on to the last shadow in sight. For me, my mother has died. My father-in-law has died. My nephew has died. My job has died. But there was no hope in keeping a pair of worn shoes that can only be known in a photograph. The shadow that wore them has been set free. And so, I had to let them go, too. I know that we can’t hold onto shadows.

Still, in a far away place is a shelf that holds some sparkling hope, a bit of magic left in memory and also of warning. It holds the glitter of a dream that was waiting to dance again, to explore again, to stand by the sea again. It holds another pair of shoes that cast light from sunup to sundown. But that twinkle of hope didn’t realize the journey because of the silent shoes worn by the one who remained, who didn’t want to leave the safety of the shadows of what was known, who was content to keep it all the same for as long as possible.

Maybe one day I can blow life into that dream again in my own accord, but for now I understand an old tale of the need to stitch on a shadow, to try to not lose it, to hang on even on the cloudy days to the very last one. It was a story told about life itself that he was trying to not let go of. All of the salty tears from far away or near can be likened to an ocean that will strand every occupant in time.

One might even be tempted to say it is Karma biting harder than one could have imagined when we lose the younger of the lot. But one shadow is never glad when another’s shadow just couldn’t hold on. One shadow must find empathy for the pain that letting go bares, knowing that one day, that shadow won’t be able find its shadow either.

For those who are busy tending their flocks, I leave a thought for you to catch: Be sure to keep an eye on your shadow, so it doesn’t suddenly blow away in the wind with your forgotten footsteps. The important people, the ones in your story, the ones who went to find the needle and thread to hold you together, really will care when your shadow vanishes with the rest.