Pictures From Our Childhood

                                       

These photos of Ezra and I were taken in the living room of the foster home. I was 5 and my brother was 7 years-old. An Oregon state social worker took our pictures, along with every other foster kid in the house. I was irritated because I had to change from my play clothes, probably filthy from climbing trees outside, into the blue dress I am wearing. I assume Ezra felt the same way because in his photo his eyes are red, meaning he had been crying. I am betting they interrupted his afternoon tv cartoons for this picture.

In the foster home, these are the photos we had taken of us. There are no birthday, no first day of school, no goofy hanging-out- in-the-backyard pictures. Granted, this was back in the 1970's when photos were expensive. The film had to be purchased and then processed, so no one "wasted" a picture on silliness. The few pictures I do have are exactly like these, taken by a social worker and are only of me and Ezra. We didn't take pictures with the other foster kids. I assume it was a privacy kind of thing.

 There are no pictures of us with our foster parents and their natural children, either.  How much of that again was the cost issue, since our foster parents were poor as church mice, or they just didn't think to take pictures, and how much was they weren't allowed to, I don't know. But considering we lived in the foster home until I was seven years old, I thinking it is weird there are no photos beyond the rare picture taken by the social workers.

In today's modern digital camera explosion, where a child can have thousands of pictures taken before it's first birthday, my lack of childhood photos seem stark until I remember that it wasn't that long ago that photos didn't exist at all. In the grand scheme of life, it doesn't really matter that I have no photographic record of my childhood. But it sure would be nice if I did.