". . . What I felt for my daughter bypassed the language center of my brain altogether. It was a jolt, an electric sizzle that connected my head to my heart. It wasn’t hearts and flowers; in fact, much of the time it felt nearly unbearable, like blood starting to flow into a frozen extremity. My feelings for my daughter constricted my chest and kept me up nights, worrying about whether she was getting enough to eat, to drink, whether she was happy. Whether she was still breathing. Did I love her? The word seemed puny in the face of such an intense and fundamental sense of connection with another human being . . ." . . . and I feel the same way about my son, 52 Weeks a year . . .
Harriet Brown -- February 26, 2010 I wasn’t ever planning on going further than 52 WEEKS, but decided it was important to keep on going after reading Joan Didion’s book Blue Nights” at the beginning of December. It is an accounting of her daughter Quintana Roo’s death, in 2003, when she was just 39 years old. It is also a reflection on her “thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old”. These are all things that I have been contemplating a lot over the last year myself. I wanted my children to see how I saw them, since memories fade…… my images will be a part of their memories, my gift to them…….The everyday moments of our lives together. No fluff, no styling or rearranging, the likes of which go on at all of my photo shoots all the time. Didion writes the words of the playwrite Ntozake Shange “What I have memorized is my child’s face at different points in her life”. All I can say is that if my memories fade, and I have no more stories left to tell, my images are here to speak for me-to them-of what I saw……… Melanie Acevedo -- January 1, 2012 I woke up this morning to the kind of quiet that only happens when there's been a snowfall. That blanket of white is all about endless possibilities for children--pure magic. Right now my kids’ whole lives are opening up before them; everything is so hopeful, every goal is reachable. For us grown-ups, every year is hopefully about another lesson learned. Loss, gain, gratitude, regret, fear, ambitions, and dreams still intact propel us forward, for better or for worse.
I want my children's lives to stay focused on the endless possibilities. I want them to always believe that anything is possible for them--I want it for all of us grown-ups too!
It's my wish for 2013 that we all move forward with hope and the thought of endless possibilities in our hearts. If we watch our children, perhaps they can teach us how it's done.
Melanie Acevedo -- January 1, 2013
