Chez Spud

My lovely sister-in-law is goodly making a photo album for our parents-in-law (MrSpud’s parents) for Christmas. She’s collecting photos from the weddings of all three of their children, so kind of her. I’m so glad I’m not in charge since I’ve failed to put even our own wedding photos in an album, even though we got married nearly 5 years ago. Ooops. Must have slipped off that damn To Do list…

So I’ve been going through our wedding photos over the last few days, picking out the few that don’t make MrSpud look monstrously fat (he overate out of stress and then refused to diet to look good for the photos…he regrets it now…frankly, we all do). But once I’d stopped weeping at his royal bloatyness, I was struck by how many of the people at our wedding are no longer part of our lives. Two have died, at least 3 couples have split up and a surprising large number of people have quietly just slid out of our lives for various reasons. Mostly, geography has got in the way, some just sneaked off without us noticing, some were actively ‘sacked’ for cruel and unusual selfishness. GOOD RIDDANCE.

Surely wedding photos must be the most accurate ‘snapshot’ of what I call the ‘fabric’ of your  life that you ever get? The one big occasion when you invite everyone who is important to you to be with you, and then you photograph them. So it’s interesting that, for us, only 5 years later that ‘snapshot’ is so wildly out of date. If we were to get married right now the snapshot would be so very different. And MrSpud would be a whole lot slimmer (thank the Lord), but I’d be fatter (boo hiss). But we’d invite a completely different crowd.

Isn’t it interesting how the sands of your life shift like that…slowly, oh so slowly and without you really clocking it? These people who are the very fabric of your life, who support you, laugh with you, love you, cry with you…they move in, move on and move out. We all do it…mostly without meaning to…in and out we go. Mostly it’s a very subtle shift, with only the occasional dramatic exit.

I’d love to be able to map it, and track it. These little shifts and changes that alter the path and pattern of your life. I notice it most often at Christmas, when I come to write our cards. And realise another year has passed without seeing xyz, and pondering when you make the cut and take them off the list. And then you add the new, shiny people in.

In and out they go…some constant, some new, some old, some are forever….whoever they are, however long they stick around, they are part of the complex web of relationships and connections that underpin our lives and weave the history of our lives. What a quilt they would make…I read an article somewhere recently about someone who takes a polaroid photo of every person who comes in to her home, and then displays the photos in her hall. That’s a wonderful, evolving representation of what I’m wiffling on about. But what I want is a map of the subtle changes and shifts….too much to ask? So that when I look back at my life and try to make sense of it, I can see all the people who made it what it is…even if I have to wonder where the hell some of them went?

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