only the jodi

big edie and the camera

the jodi — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:00:00 +0000

To this day, you point a camera in her direction and my mother’s shoulders go back, a leg is extended, and the face is angled to its best advantage. When we Skype, she worries about, and adjusts, the lighting in the room to her advantage. She can’t help herself, it’s the way she was raised.

My mother grew up in front of a camera, in a family and an era where pretty was seen as her most valuable asset. She had a headful of strawberry blond banana curls and uncles who were camera buffs. ”They would take me outside, put me on a pedestal, and start shooting.”

Fast forward out of childhood, and there she stood, shoulders back, her hair now a thick and wild mane of red, one long leg extended at an angle, small breasts, and cheekbones that could slice steak—the body couture designer’s dream of—and a “black ass” you could set a cocktail on – the milkshake that brought all the boys to the yard.

It seems inevitable that she married my father, or another photographer just like him. She was trained to become who you wanted her to be in front camera. To him, everything was photo opportunity.

I don’t imagine there are enough years in infinity to achieve the emotional distance needed to be objective about one’s family photos. Instead, I simply assemble the archives of her life, their marriage, my childhood, as seen through the lens of a variety of cameras. My favorite photos are the one when she’s been caught off-guard, or later, has tired of posing and reverts to her natural state of silly.

Me and my little mommy, first baby, first day home from the hospital, first one in her plan that included a dozen. I love the cigarette. It was 1957, there was always a cigarette; but there was never another baby. Plans change.

Photos credit: Fred Doff, July 1957
Location: Jackson Heights, Queens

on keeping my virginity

the jodi — Sun, 13 May 2012 18:01:41 +0000

Posted in Tuesdays with Mommy Writing

If a boy wants you to do something, and you don’t want to—you know what I mean—just say ‘I don’t want to.’ When he says why not, you say, ‘Because I don’t want to.’ You keep answering ‘Because I don’t want to,’ and he can’t argue with that. There’s nothing to grab on to. ~ my little mommy - on keeping my virginity, or at the very least, not being coerced into anything. Although the advice came a few years too late to guard my virginity, it has been surprisingly effective in a multitude of situations, sexual and otherwise.

If a boy wants you to do something, and you don’t want to—you know what I mean—just say ‘I don’t want to.’ When he says why not, you say, ‘Because I don’t want to.’ You keep answering ‘Because I don’t want to,’ and he can’t argue with that. There’s nothing to grab on to.

my little mommy – on keeping my virginity, or at the very least, not being coerced into anything. Although the advice came a few years too late to guard my virginity, it has been surprisingly effective in a multitude of situations, sexual and otherwise.

“My mother taught me to fight”

the jodi — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:42:50 +0000

Posted in Tuesdays with Mommy Writing

Source: Uploaded by user via Daphne on Pinterest

in the beginning, there was my little mommy

the jodi — Sat, 12 May 2012 18:02:21 +0000

Posted in Tuesdays with Mommy Writing

My mother was born on Friday the 13th, except it was a Thursday. Don’t bother to look it up – she’ll tell you the truth in the same breath she tells you the lie.

She’ll also tell you exactly how much she paid for the blouse she’s wearing ($7.00), how much it cost originally ($63.00), how she finagled the use of coupons, senior citizen’s discount and a well-timed sale to pull that coup off (this part, usually accompanied by a giggle), and how long she has had it (on average, 22 years – she takes very good care of her clothes). Just ask. Or don’t. She’ll tell you either way.

After my father died, she moved out of the house and into a condo bringing with her no less than 11 pairs of white Keds (for gardening), 8 bathrobes (spring, summer, winter, a little sexy, Daddy’s heavy robe, after bath, travel, Daddy’s light robe), and enough earrings to require a special structure to be mounted on the wall. The three jewelry boxes were already overflowing with enough colored beads and trinkets to buy Manhattan, and possibly even Staten Island (at the original price, adjusted, of course, for inflation, and discounted, of course, because, well…really? Staten Island?).

When I was a kid, her side of their closet held just two pair of washable polyester pants, three jackets, three or four blouses and a handful of scarves. Everything was red, white, or blue, which made it easy to mix and match, but also gave the impression that she was crazy patriotic. She was, but in a I’ve-read-the-United-States-Constitution way, not in a traditional my-country-right-or-wrong-book-burning-flag-waving, red, white and blue kind of way.

When she was a kid the Great Depression has just hit. It didn’t let up until she was almost a teen. She’s stuck it out though the Depression, two bouts of breast cancer, two marriages, forty-three years with my father, and twenty years of sleepless nights worrying about her drunken, drug-addicted daughter. She kept a rolodex card with all my vitals: hair color, eye color, tattoos, and scars, in case she was called to claim my body from the morgue.

She’s entitled to have 11 pairs of sneakers, 8 bathrobes, two walk-in closets, an entire wall full of jewelry, and all of the anything she wants.

This is going to be all about her. My little mommy.