As a kid, I’d sit in the backseat of our car, with a disposable camera, pointing it at what mattered to me: my parents, driving, passing cars, clouds. Ten, maybe fifteen years apart, different times, different cars, ‘same’ backseat. In one, my father’s hands are on the wheel, a sliver of his forehead caught in the mirror. In the other, my mother’s hands are on the wheel — she took over because his drinking had made him too sick to drive. In her mirror, just her eyes, looking back. I found both photographs last year, going through boxes with my brother and sister to put together a slideshow for my mother’s funeral. She died last year. My father died twenty years before her. Looking at these pictures now, I still see exactly what I saw then: two people I loved, driving me somewhere.
