“I’d like to know that my life had an impact,” my brother Bill remarked as I was driving home from Petaluma. He meant that in a global sense, I suspect, as much of his life has focused on raising awareness to make earthlings energy conscious and green, that they heed his warnings that natural resources are jeopardized by human behavior, such as climate warming, pollution, indifference, and carelessness.
Bill was never a father, meaning that any legacy issues are off the table when it comes to passing down his genes or influencing biological children. He loves being a grandfather — to one of Janet’s son’s kids. He has made an impact on Steven, a stepson.
Is my work, my photography, a legacy? Julie Bowles, a bride thirty-one years ago, posted a wedding photograph on Facebook that I took in 1992. Here it is:
Not bad.
I looked at it with a critical eye. The lighting was good, the posing acceptable, (I’d move the legs of the smaller flower girl so that she wasn’t facing quite so forward, but I do like the tip of her head). I’m looking at it as a professional would. For Julie the meaning behind that image is much greater than the legs of the flower girl.
So maybe, even if this image, or the thousands of images like it that I took for other people, won’t be in the Library of Congress, they mean something to them. That’s a legacy.
The images I’ve taken that mean more to me capture what it is to be human, that reveal complex emotions. These are a legacy, too. This is one that touches everyone.
Andrew meets his son at SFO. Living in Kathmandu when Susanto was born, Andrew could only witness the birth of his first child through SKYPE thousands of miles away. After flying from Nepal to San Francisco and wandering around the arrival gates looking for a familiar face, he finally caught up with me, Jadyne, Jennifer, and his first born child, Susanto.
January 1, 1988. The last time we saw Teeny. I have no awareness that a snapshot might become something more that. Nine days after I took this image my sister-in-law was killed in an avalanche, not found until Labor Day.
I hope my legacy goes beyond pixels and celluloid. I’d like to believe that whatever qualities I have as a son, a husband, a father, a friend, a brother, will be appreciated by those I leave behind. Wordsworth, in Lyrical Ballads, wrote, “The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love.” Better those than the time I stuck gum in Anthony Francis Wentersdorf’s hair, or called Walter Galitzki “Panface” because he could put his forehead, nose and chin on a wall at the same time, or that I set a mailbox on fire on Grand Vista Avenue one night. I remember those little acts of unkindness and spite, and although they’re a distant part of my past, I can’t excise them from my memory, hoping that others can, especially Tony Wentersdorf, Walter Galitzki, and the UPS.
Shakespeare suggested that it might be a time to worry.
I prefer that it was the other way around. Let’s bury that evil.
There are people beyond my family that I have touched. I’m hoping that my passing will leave them with good thoughts. I’ve received texts and emails from former students who have expressed as much. They are gratifying. I’ve kept a few. I doubt that any of us fully understands the impact that our presence on this earth has had, whether it’s global (as my brother Bill hopes), through family and friends, or brought about by the unremembered acts of kindness and love.
When acts of kindness do all the heavy lifting.