I was at the Getty museum waiting for my friend Manisha to meet me for a very cultural Saturday evening when I received a phone call from my mother. She said softly, "I knew you would be upset if I didn't call you since I know you are out right now, but your grandfather just passed away." I don't know what I said in response but we exchanged a couple of sentences and hung up. Immediately I texted my husband and I got in trouble from the security lady for talking on my cell phone when I answered his call. She was nice about it, plus she had no idea that my grandfather just died and my husband was calling to console me. Part of me wanted to explain so that she'd feel sorry for me or be nicer to people who answer their cell phones in museums but I kept it private. In fact, I didn't even tell my friend about it just in case it would change the dynamics for the evening. So I pretended as though nothing happened.
I looked at art, feeling consoled by the pastels and use of color by the painting Starry Night by Edvard Munch. I was deeply touched by a series of photographs by Song Yongping. I'll let you look at the pictures and then tell you what the placard said.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/new_china/song_parents.html
The placard read: Song Yongping, a first-born son, sought to balance his artistic career with care of his invalid mother and father as part of his expected duty. In 1998 he began photographing them in a series called My Parents. Using a confrontational approach to portraiture, these images combine performance with elements of everyday familial life. Karen Smith, a writer and art critic based in Beijing, described the photographs as "...a testimony to family bonds, and a sad glimpse into the lives of the masses caught up in the tidal wave of change in China today." The strength of this work is in its collaborative nature. Song Yongping, while tending to his parents' needs, was given the opportunity to honor them by sharing his art making with them. In recording the eventual loss of his parents in 2001, he created a lasting testament to their lives.
I felt connected to Song Yongping for a moment, as though I was meant to view his photographs at that particular time in my life. Part of me thought it was too revealing, how could his parents agree to let their son take pictures of them in their underwear, with his father's catheter hanging from his penis. But as I continued seeing the series of photographs, especially the last one with its chaos and distress, I understood what he was trying to tell me. I understood how much he loved him and what their death meant to him just from six photographs. I have no artistic means to demonstrate the loss of my grandmother and then six months later my grandfather but my sad little words. Sometimes if I pick the right ones in the right order it can be a visual painting. Here is my crude representation of them:
I remember my grandmother's laugh, the way she would light up when she saw me and the smell of chili powder in their Tucson home. She loved garage sales and walking in her bare feet, her second toe adorned with a white gold ring. When I was younger she would play dress up with me and dab me with a miniature bottle of her perfume. She overused the word "beautiful" and signed her cards with a loopy happy face. I thought the space in her neck would make a perfect hiding spot for some of my necklaces. There is a tape out there somewhere with a recording of my grandmother singing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with my asthmatic sister. Every time I hear that song I think of her. When I would talk to her on the phone or write her letters she had a way of talking about me as though I was someone very special.
I remember my grandfather's long black moustache, his elegant clothes and his passion for baseball. He would always dress up when getting on an airplane meanwhile I opt for comfort in glasses and yoga pants. He was kind of scary when I was younger, I think it was the authoritative tone from his years as being a principal. They lived in Ecuador for a year and brought me back an indigenous looking doll that I would play with while speaking only in Spanish. I still have it. There was a poster in my grandfather's office that captivated me of Emiliano Zapata with the words, "It is better to die on your feet than to continue living on your knees."
When I was six years old I asked my grandfather, "Grandpa, if you could choose, who would you rather be, a boy or a girl?" He humored me and said, "well, God made me a boy so that's what I would choose." I pressed him further, "but Grandpa, are you sure? You don't want to be a girl instead?" He insisted, "no, I wouldn't." I argued with him, "but Grandpa, girls get to wear jewelry and make up and dresses." I'm told he gave my parents a look and that was the end of that conversation.
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