A magic roll of film.

In late 2017, I pulled out an old film camera, a little Olympus
point-and-shoot I had kept from the early 2000's. It still held a
half-exposed roll of color film. I had no recollection of the last
time its shutter released, but thought the film might still be viable.

I fired off the remaining exposures over the following week and sent
it off to the lab, not hoping for much beyond a roll of black frames.
What came back was unexpected magic...

The film stock was aged, and had likely been frozen and thawed. The
images have a strong grain and the color is all over the place, with
hazing, fogging, and wacky contrast. But the photos are delicate, and
precious to me. A single roll of film unspools moments from my 2004
life, juxtaposed with my life in 2017.

There's 2004 Eileen... oh Eileen, Eileen, Eileen!! Several frames show
her smiling as she knocks about my quirky apartment in the woods back
East. It wasn’t even a year since we’d first met, and we would have
eight more years before cancer took her. How wonderful to see these
lost moments of our life together.

There's Diesel, the beloved cat we rescued from a feral litter on a
derelict New Jersey farm. Deezy the kitten, right next to another
photo of her sleek dignity 13 years later. How strange and lovely to
see her young and old.

The day the camera resurfaced, I took a selfie. It’s just three years
ago, but already I can see that I looked younger then.

I’d also taken a picture of old Red, who's been gone for a couple
years now. He's looking regal, despite devil eyes from the flash. A
Luxo ball from Pixar rests between his paws.

And then... my sweet daughter, Tara, two years old. Next to her
godmother, Star. It's the era of footie pajamas and boiled eggs in a
cup. Smiles all around.

There are lovely photos of my darling Dervala holding Tara, and a
selfie of me and Tara together, shot during an outing to The Little
Farm in the East Bay hills. We’ve hardly visited since. Another era
documented, then gone before we knew it. It stuns me to see these
fleeting eras side by side.

I've sat on this for a while because, honestly, it's kinda heavy. It's
such a gift to discover these photos of Eileen, and to find them
linked by emulsion and acetate to Tara and Dervala. I guess in some
ways I'm the connection. I'm the film that carries the emulsion
holding these lives together.

Eileen would have turned 48 this week. My memories of her, however
aged and faded, come back daily. I share with Dervala as many stories
of her as I can—what she was like, what she liked, what bothered her,
how she moved through the world. She’s a presence in our lives. In the
chaos of 2020, I yearn for her laconic take on all that’s going on.
Eileen was a scientist and a teacher, dry and funny through the very
worst. She would have known, better than most, what to make of where
we are.