Forever Young
Photographs are easily and frequently taken, so when our twins were babies, we created a monthly ritual amid the visual clutter. This week, on their 20th birthday, they took their first self-portrait.
This week, both of my children aged out of that transformational, tumultuous, terrific period known as being a teenager.
Now at 20 years old, Zach and Maggie Rose can no longer be referred to as “boy-girl twins.”
Two years ago, really, they had shifted into “young man-young woman twins” status. But it was only a few weeks ago when I first used that more accurate adult verbiage to describe them. That’s when the unreal reality of their imminent 20-year-old-ness began to sink in.
Along the way, in the cyber-cloud, on smartphones, on laptops, in God knows how many other screens of family and friends, their images quite possibly outnumber the 7,300-plus days of their lives.
Though that figure might seem high, in the context of their 21st century-born peers, I don’t think it’s all that unusual.
Below is one of the earliest ones, when they were about a week old. By then, I am sure we had already snapped at least 150 photos. I’d be surprised if more than two or three photos of me from my first week of life would be found anywhere.
The reason for the photographic onslaught is simple: it’s exponentially easier to take and digitally store photos. In contrast to the old days of taking a photo and waiting weeks to develop your roll of film (Polaroid’s instant images the exception), the rise of smartphones, complete with their stunning visual capabilities, has ushered in an era of excessive photo-taking.
Against that backdrop, Bridgett and I long ago resolved to create structure to track their progress through all the visual clutter: The Chair Photo. We carried out this ritual on the eighth day of each month, in light of their birth coming on August 8th.
We influenced some other couples to do the same with their children and 11 years ago, our ritual was featured in Good Housekeeping.
Referring back to what Bridgett told Good Housekeeping, the chair is still intact and there was no rebellion. We managed to keep this all up until their 18th birthday.
At times they put up a little resistance…such as the infamous No, We’re Not Going to Sit in the Chair Protest that came a month before their second birthday.
But by their mid-teens, Zach and Maggie Rose had gone from rolling-of-the-eyes reluctance to a full-blown (if unspoken) appreciation of the tradition. Somewhere along the way, abetted by Bridgett’s annual creation of updated time-lapse videos, they became aware that they were the focus of a pretty cool project.
The final edition of this video series (click above), Bridgett’s meticulously edited labor of love, contains over 200 monthly images, each displayed in the blink of a second. The soundtrack backing it is Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” and, no, I’m not crying—you’re crying!
The past two years, as they have gone off to their respective colleges, we have scaled back The Chair Photo to an annual birthday tradition. By “we,” I suppose I mean Zach and Maggie Rose, since this past Tuesday they took matters—and the camera—into their own hands. Below is the product of a self-timer, with neither mom nor dad assisting.
The fact that they handled it this time is both symbolic and pragmatic: we won’t always be around. And we have raised them to be self-sufficient.
