photo friday: the sad place

      For all those who were lost,
             For all those who were stolen,
        For all those who were left behind,
               For all those who were not forgotten

African Burial Ground, Lower Manhattan, New York City. 

© 2012 Amber Schley Iragui

St Paul's Chapel, established 1766, with the Freedom Towers rising above the 9/11 Memorial in the background. © 2012 Amber Schley Iragui

 Outside the 9/11 Memorial, with the top of my son's head.
© 2012 Amber Schley Iragui

Bellevue Hospital, NYC, where Charles' best friend died of cancer last year.
© 2012 Amber Schley Iragui

Trinity Cemetery, the only remaining active cemetery in Manhattan.

© 2012 Amber Schley Iragui

I am drawn to broken things—to heartache and scars. And although I've discovered my own strength most keenly in pain, I was drawn to sad things long before my own life had dealt me much of it. Even as a child I sensed that people who had suffered much carried far greater strength than those who had not, it was as if their pain endowed them with extra eyes and and broader, kinder hands. And as I grew I learned from experience that the human spirit, stripped of pretense and falsity, is often revealed as the beautiful and resilient creature it is. Looking directly at the sad places, things from which other people may want to avert their gaze, gives me courage.

The photos here were all taken on Sunday, when our family took a trip tour of "sad places" in Manhattan. We had absolutely no luck getting into any of them.

Our first stop, the African Burial Ground, a memorial for the recently discovered remains of more than 400 free and enslaved Africans buried in the 17th and 18th centuries, was closed for renovations. In addition, menacing signs warned that the premises had been poisoned. I stuck my camera under the barricade nonetheless and managed to capture the memorial with a reflection of the sky and clouds.

The historical graveyards at both St Paul's Chapel and Trinity Church on Wall Street were already closed for the day. But from the former I was able to capture not only the old historic building and the ancient graves around it, but the new Freedom Towers being built on the site of Ground Zero.

We didn't realize you have to schedule your visit the 9/11 Memorial online beforehand, so we just mingled with the tourists for a bit outside the site. We then drove up to the Marble Cemetery on Second Street, which was not surprisingly closed. From there we drove up First Avenue past Bellevue Hospital where Charles' best friend Valerie Fry died last year of cancer. She was only 41.

Our last stop was the large Trinity Cemetery not far from our home. It was also closed, but we walked around the deserted streets bordering it for awhile as the sky darkened. It is the only remaining active cemetery in Manhattan. It was time to go home.

Next week's Photo Friday theme, in honor of the end of it, is summer. It needs no explanation.

a sad place, of notebooks and journals—part two

We arrived home from our lovely and relaxing Cape Cod vacation on Saturday evening, after a day and a half of me stressing and pouting. Let us just say that I don't love transitions. I loathe them. I was cranky and irritable because I knew I had to pack up the house, drive home, unpack, send out the laundry, buy groceries, find a new nanny, and try to catch up on work—all the other things involved in transitions. How do I deal with such dread? I procrastinate. I find every reason to pour another gin and tonic and watch the oak trees sway. If only I actually relaxed while procrastinating! But no, I sit there with a gin and tonic and worry.

I suspect this condition is at least partly hereditary, passed down from my father and likely onto my son. All our biggest parenting challenges took place directly upon returning home after travel. So this summer I made a travel journal for him, with the hope this visual way to prepare for our trips would alleviate this acute transition disorder (ATD—I just made that up, but I'm sure it's ripe to included in the new DSM, along with a handy prescription medication to dull it).

Isaiah's travel journal follows our trips: our journey up to the Cape last month and then down to Spring Lake next week. I created maps of his room here at home, our neighborhood, and traced the road we would drive through Connecticut, Rhode Island, and onto the Cape. I made a map of our neighborhood in Chatham, Massachusetts. And, given that there hasn't been any sort of breakdown upon our return, I think it might have worked.

All this map-making inspired Isaiah decided to draw a few maps himself, one of which I've included here. He drew New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Hawaii, Cape Cod, a volcano, and some boroughs of New York. I was curious about one place on the maps Isaiah drew—an area he told me was "the sad place." You can see it below in the upper left hand corner of his map, it's a reddish-magenta triangle.

 

 Here is a closer look at my labelled rendition of his map:

Isaiah didn't seem sad while drawing The Sad Place, adding it rather matter-of-factly. I asked him to tell me more about it. He said, "It's where the tall buildings fell down." And then I remembered. On our recent trip down to Brooklyn we drove past Ground Zero, and I had told him it was a "very sad place." My comment seemed to have landed in his mind amid the volcanoes, Hawaii, and his beloved New York state.

I think it's nice: mapping a sad place. Creating a place to put the things we mourn, regret, or perhaps just things we can't comprehend. Failures, disasters, years that pass in emptiness or depression. We map them to remember them. We honor their place in our lives instead of ignoring or suppressing them. They are part of us, part of our story and our strength.