I wrote earlier about the tradition of photographing convalescence as a way to memorialize a significant illness.
I don't know what sickness my paternal Grandmother, Tatjana, had contracted when she looked into this lens:
Kaunas, Lithuania, about 1938. Even when she's sick, Tatjana has melancholy eyes that dominate the photo.
Click on the "convalescence" label to see more.
My high school offered a group of seniors the chance to travel to Greece and Turkey during the spring break of our senior year. One nun, my AP English teacher, would serve as chaperone, and two other adults—her biological sister and her friend—would join the trip as well.
Few students showed interest in the trip. Perhaps it was too expensive. Perhaps it collided with other scheduled, senior-year activities. Perhaps the students didn't want to spend ten days under the watchful eye of that particular nun.
Only four girls signed up for the trip. I was one of them.
I fell ill about one week before our scheduled departure. I don't remember whether I had strep throat or pneumonia, but I was sick enough to stay in bed and to miss at least five days of school. I was determined, however, to recuperate quickly because I feared—rightly—that my Parents would prohibit me from traveling if I were still ill.
To show my Parents that I truly was on the mend, I spent several "sick days" working ahead on the homework that would be due just before my trip. I blitzed through a number of projects, and I convincingly demonstrated my good health.
Because it's customary in our culture to record an illness, my Dad snapped a photograph of me, typing away on a pre-departure paper:
Suburban Chicago, April 1976. Here's the photo that hangs above my bed.
I had a great time in Greece. The nun largely left the four of us on our own. We were surprised—and pleased—by the lack of supervision. As a result, we experienced all sorts of adventures that stirred up a lot of excitement for teenagers.
We had some fun, and we had some troubles. The nun must have been aware of our escapades. On our first day back to school, she stopped me outside of her classroom, and she admonished me not to reveal some of the more colorful aspects of the trip to my other classmates.
When my Dad packed for the hospital stay that would follow his heart surgery, he included a favorite camera among his "must-have" items.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, January 1981. Dad captured this view, looking toward Lake Michigan, from his hospital room.
In the first half of the twentieth century, children often died. Mr. Irene's maternal Grandparents, Anna and Stanley, lost one child, Baby
Jean, when she was an infant, and another child, Benny, when Benny was a young boy.
Death came into people's lives with little warning. A dog bite—like the one Benny suffered—could lead to a fatal infection. Pneumonia was life threatening. My Mom's maternal uncle, Edvardas, died of a ruptured appendix, and so did her paternal Grandfather, Cody Sr.
The expectation of likely death probably prompted people to photograph ill family members. Our albums have many snapshots of relatives in different stages of convalescence—from people resting with the flu to those enduring the last gasps through cancer. It's a genre of snapshots, and it resembles the series of funeral photos that I wrote about earlier.
My Mom fell gravely ill as a young girl. Initially, the doctors were unable to diagnose the ailment. They recommended that she drink large quantities of heavy cream and the nectar squeezed from an aloe vera plant. Later, the same physicians realized that they had misdiagnosed Mom's condition, and they put her on a restricted, no-fat diet.
Kaunas, Lithuania, about 1935. Mom rests. The medications stand on the bedside chair. You've seen a photo of my Mom's childhood bedroom earlier.
What's different here? Not only do Raphael's adorable angels still hang on the screen; now, someone has clipped holy cards featuring the Madonna and Jesus Christ to the screen so that they can watch over the sick child.
