Category: Self Portrait Tuesday

When Ford was about six months old, and we were weary of living in a hotel in Connecticut, we slung our money into an Airstream trailer. If not just as an escape, we bought it so we could toodle around the East Coast for a while. We trailered it with a converted stepvan that had a wireless satallite atop the hood, which served as Damon’s workspace, and I’d follow the trailer around New England in our family car, birddogging through the convoluted Boston construction, around granite cliffs in Maine, along quaint historical neighborhood streets. I loved every part of the journey, even the perpetually damp and confining bathroom that served our family of three and any visiting guests.

During the days that Damon worked at the brick office in Middleton, Connecticut, Ford and I spent our mornings and afternoons at the beach. I’d jog along the trail, he’d fall asleep under the billowing mosquito net ofthe jogger, and when he awoke we’d hang out on the beach itself. He learned to crawl on the sands of Hammonassett State Park. I’d put gossamer ctenophores in his hand, and they’d glisten little rainbow hairs as they slipped through his fat fingers. He’d wave his hands through the floating garden of red and green algae, slick translucent stained glass that looked entirely edible. He’d put rocks in his mouth, I’d sweep them out.

During the middle of the day, when it was too hot to be outside, we’d be confined to the trailer. And this was all good and actually lovely when he took his afternoon nap. I would steam up a latte and write or read. But when he was restless, we went a little stir crazy in the 22 foot trailer.

In this photo, Damon caught us decompressing against the screen door one hot afternoon, when we were too chicken to leave our three-odd square feet of cold air-conditioning and head to the beach.

Last May, we downsized and sold the trailer where Ford spent most of his first year. I miss it dearly, but what’s shocking is that Ford misses it, too. The other day I asked him,
“What do you miss about the Airstream?”
“The stickers in the windows. And the bed with all the windows around it.”
I miss the bed, too. I miss the encapsulation of our family within a small space, streamlining our experience and always having home to return to at the end of a bust day exploring some foreign place. That’s why I dream of a sailboat, of taking the kids for a year or so around the world, when they’re old enough not to need a “time out dinghy” or a line of drying cloth diapers hanging from the mast.

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Once upon a time, I used to be a dental student! I did, I really did. I was so proud of myself: I had this great routine where I never had to figure out what I’d wear the next day, because I owned an endless supply of antique green surgical scrubs. And they were SO comfortable, like a pair of pajamas, that I often found myself sleeping in them with my books lying across my chest, the booklight still beaming down on me, my glasses resting on the arm of the sofa. At three in the morning, I’d have to turn on The Weather Channel just to have a chatty person to keep me company while I pored over flow charts and glossy Netter illustrations of nasal conchae, nerves, shiny pink mounds of taste buds.

On the first day of class, I sat in the front row, careful not to miss a detail. But with every day came another quiz or exam, so in no time I migrated towards the back of the classroom, where I was able to efficiently gather notes and vent stress by making fun of geeky professors along with the other juvenile students in my class. I could rest my feet on the back of the chair in front of me without being noticed, and eat the rest of my egg McMuffin and orange juice, or study for the next exam.

In gross anatomy, we were assigned a woman in her mid-seventies. Her lungs were matte and moldy black from years of smoking. Her withered terrain made me sad and her cross-section was so yellow with fat that I couldn’t eat enchiladas for the entire year. For weeks I tried masking the smell of formaldehyde with Vicks Vap-O-Rub, but it left my nose chilled and my chest filled with a heavy ghost of tank juice (which is what I called the bath). By the end of the year I’d resigned to the smell of gross lab, because there was little time to fret over odors during finals.

In this hilarious and surreal picture above you see me posing, as if I were about to grind the surface of a tooth down with a huge burr. We were clowning around that day and I think this was a halfass attempt to be amusing. I look possessed. What do you think?

When I transferred to California (University of the Pacific) during my second year, I suddenly felt at a crossroads where dental school, and all the rigidity it imposed on me, represented a dead-end road. So, to sum up an emotional month or two that followed: I quit. And I haven’t looked back.
…But I would like to know where I put all those probes and scraping tools, because they’d come in handy right now with the encaustic painting!

Enjoy more Self Portrait Challenge.