Bekah McNeel

Tag: family photos

Behind the Photo: Chicken Pox

January 17, 2017 No Comments

My mom recently sorted out all the remnants of the days when you had to print the whole role of film to get the one picture worth keeping. Over the years the best photos were picked over for frames, albums, and other display pieces.

These are the left-overs. But not the throw-away left overs. The ones that tell the story of the real family behind the Christmas card photos.

I grew up with nine cousins, and when I say “grew up with” I mean we grew up like siblings. Eight of us were in high school at the same time, meaning that eight of us were under five-years-old at the same time. We all lived in the same city, and we did everything together.

So it made sense that in 1986 when Dusty got a bugle for Christmas and later came down with the chicken pox, our parents got together and literally had us pass the bugle around to ensure that we all got the disease at the ideal age.

I don’t know how I really felt about the chicken pox, but judging by this photo I was pretty satisfied.

chicken-pox

Behind the Photo: Cheerleader

January 10, 2017 No Comments

My mom recently sorted out all the remnants of the days when you had to print the whole role of film to get the one picture worth keeping. Over the years the best photos were picked over for frames, albums, and other display pieces.

These are the left-overs. But not the throw-away left overs. The ones that tell the story of the real family behind the Christmas card photos.

Ask any sports photographer and they will tell you: people make horrendous faces when they are physically exerting themselves.

Nonetheless, when I made the varsity cheerleading squad at the end of my freshmen year of high school, I immediately began to picture myself looking like this:

screen-shot-2017-01-08-at-10-03-01-pm

However, a cheerleading uniform does not a Gabrielle Union make. In cheerleading, the head bobbling and flirty uniforms belie the level of difficulty. You are doing things that are far more demanding than a layup, a pass, or running in a circle…and yet you have to do the whole thing with your hair in place and a big ol’ goofy grin (or a fierce, open-mouth, club face).

Or you are me, and your face tells the world exactly how hard you are working.

The moment I found out I had made the squad is captured on film, and it gives an accurate forecast of things to come:

cheer-tryouts

This showed up some time later. I have thrown it away at least three times:

cheer-skirt

Behind the Photo: Snow

January 9, 2017 No Comments

My mom recently sorted out all the remnants of the days when you had to print the whole role of film to get the one picture worth keeping. Over the years the best photos were picked over for frames, albums, and other display pieces.

These are the left-overs. But not the throw-away left overs. The ones that tell the story of the real family behind the Christmas card photos.

The first time I saw snow was in 1986 in San Antonio. It lightly dusted the front lawn and was gone by noon.

The first time I saw SNOW! was in 1990 in Steamboat Springs, CO.

We had driven through the night to get to our friends’ ski lodge. I went to sleep in the desert, and woke up to mounds of fluffy, puffy, soft angel snow all around.

When we stopped at a gas station where substantial snow drifts were mere feet from the car, my mom let me get out to see. Envisioning a cloud like experience of tossing marshmallow flavored snow all around me – no doubt inspired by cartoons, which do not have feelings- I threw myself face first into a snow drift. Like a cartoon.

I was wearing a sweatsuit and Keds.

This would be my first major reckoning of fantasy and reality.

It. stung. so. bad.

In this picture I am pausing my massive fit long enough to smile for the photo.

snow