Picture magic

So many ways of seeing

I haven’t lived in San Diego for 50 years, but the city where I gave birth to my son before moving back to New York and letting his adoptive family raise him always draws me back. However old I am at the time, I still feel the ghosts of my 19- and 20-year-old selves when I’m there.

In 1976, I turned 20 at the end of May.

Heavy with my son’s developing, I lumbered around my corner of California’s oldest city capturing its seaside light with the pocket camera my parents had sent out for my birthday. I was hungry to keep the eucalyptus and palm trees, so different from the beeches, oaks and maples of home, as well as my beach town’s postcard views of sea and sky. I wanted to freeze my puppy Marcie’s huge dark eyes and bat-like ears in time, her chocolate muzzle and lean collie/ shepherd frame so seldom still.

The tiny camera let me capture who we were in those days of waiting for my baby to be born, back when I still thought plans were guarantees. In the closet my sister and I had turned into a pocket nursery — by painting the walls light green and making a bureau into a changing table — we’d stacked up cloths and diapers, powder and lotion, onesies and a few light blankets. The musical giraffe and puffy orange teething fork my college pals had gifted on my brief visit back to NY brightened the corners where they lived.

In 2006, I flew out to San Diego with a couple friends to take surfing lessons for my 50th birthday. Newly in love with the man I’d marry two years later, I wanted to test myself physically with an adventure that seemed a little risky. I also wanted to learn about the sport my son had grown up loving. Not because I imagined we’d ever hit the waves together, but because sharing something that mattered to him let me feel closer. It was my gift to myself.

The day of our lesson, the waves were iffy and the sky overcast. Sleek and warm in our dark wetsuits — the first any of us had ever worn — my friends and I weren’t bothered a bit. Managing to spend any time upright on the surfboard for even a few seconds felt like victory.

We weren’t young. We didn’t expect to surf again. Still, we reveled in the full body glory of it. An hour of using every muscle we owned left us more exhausted yet exhilarated than we’d ever felt.

Later that night, as I blew out all 50 candles my friends had squeezed onto a round chocolate cake for me, I felt bathed in gratitude.

This year, I traveled to San Diego in the middle of May to celebrate my son’s turning 50 and my turning 70 with a photo adventure we could share. Jeff’s been making amazing digital photos for years — the nature calendar he sent one Christmas still hangs on my office wall — but he’d never developed film negatives or printed photographs in a darkroom.

I wanted to give him that magic.

I wanted him to know what it felt like to be in a darkroom, swishing a piece of photo paper around in a tray of developing fluid when an image you’ve shot floats into view, like a spirit being born.

I never got over that experience. I can still see it in my mind’s eye, still feel the thrill of both process and picture.

When he said yes to my pitch two years ago, before I’d worked out where or when or even if such a class was still being offered, it became something to make happen and look forward to. We scheduled it early before my birthday at the end of May and his in the middle of June.

When I arrived days ahead of our photo class, I realized I was also celebrating the 50th anniversary of getting to bring my son into the world, the 29 years we’ve been in reunion, and the unequaled joy I always feel in his presence. I celebrated by catching up with old friends and meeting new ones, getting to know downtown again and seeing the city I once lived in with new eyes.

I thought about how B&W photography sharpened my ability to see. I thought about how cameras need mirrors to work and can also be mirrors. I thought about how a camera is a bit like a womb in that both are tiny, dark rooms that make new forms from light and time, patterns and cells.

Everywhere I went, I felt the ghosts of my 19- and 20-year-old selves stronger than I ever had. I knew they couldn’t imagine being 70. They could barely see a week ahead. But I sensed they were dizzy with joy at how my life has unfolded. They marveled at the ocean views out the windows of the Coaster commuter train I rode north to meet some fellow writers for lunch, and the wild landscape out the trolley windows when I took it as far south as it would go to photograph where two worlds meet. They were tickled I had so many birth mom and adoptee friends who help me feel normal — two of whom I got to share a 3-hour lunch with — and continued to be impressed that I could eat where and when I wanted to, travel easily and sleep in a big hotel room with two beds.

When Jeff picked me up Sunday morning for our all-day class, I told him about the images I’d snapped and the shots I couldn’t wait to show him. We developed negatives together, learned how to roll film on plastic spools in dark photo bags and cracked each other up.

But when we pulled the developed film out of their containers and his color film images were perfect but my roll was blank, I thought I might cry. I’d ruined my other roll by shredding it in the camera, forgetting I was supposed to press the shutter release button before rewinding.

“Welcome to the heartbreak of photography,” said our instructor, Rob. “It happens to everyone sometime.”

Jeff couldn’t print his images because the darkroom was set up for B&W processing only.

But we got to share darkroom magic by printing our choice of Rob’s negatives he kept in plastic sleeves in a binder. He taught us how to use test strips to figure out the right exposure, and encouraged us as we tested, until we were ready to print on a whole 8x10 piece of photo paper.

When we brought our finished pictures from the dark into the light, Rob cheered, pointed us toward the print dryer, and asked if we had any more questions.

I asked Jeff if I could snap a pic of him with his photo and he held it up and turned toward me. My only regret is not handing Rob my phone and asking if he’d photograph the two of us standing behind our chairs, side by side, prints in hand. I would have liked to know that image of our tired, glad faces lived on my phone.

No matter.

I can see it anyway.