There are photos of him in here as well, of him holding me in his arms or carrying me on his back. I am sure these must have had special significance to him through the years. But to me they don’t trigger the same emotion that the pictures with my mom trigger. The way I see it is that to him I was just a living doll that he sometimes chose to play with, being a little kid himself. He could not discuss philosophy with this doll, but he could use her to satisfy his need for expression or something. I am looking at the photos in his apartment. I seem so happy posing and making all these faces, but I remember distinctively now that I never liked posing. He would make me pose. I remember his voice “come on Mary, strike a pose for daddy, smile for daddy, pretend you are drawing for daddy” (pretend you love daddy). Yet I don’t ever remember being shown the photographs of my numberless forced poses. And he never gave any to my mom. As if once on film I was immediately his possession. I –who he chose not to bother with, and therefore was not his- could be his on film paper forever.
A while ago, my mom, thinking that I was now old enough, confided in me that she once caught my father taking nude photographs of me and she was infuriated. She said he accused her of not understanding art… I think that’s exactly what I was for him – art. I was not his live daughter that he had to protect and take care of, but a piece of art he could work with, but once finished could let go of. I remember he would make me sing to a microphone while he accompanied me on the piano and he would record it on tape. I am saying “make me” because this was not a children’s game you play with your dad. This was not an expression of love. This was not a parent wanting to have his kid’s voice on record. This was an artist demanding absolute perfection. Whenever I would make a mistake he would stop the recording, scold me and start over again until he thought he had the perfect recording. The perfect artistic photos, the perfect voice recordings…so much perfection…yet how imperfect he was as a parent, how unable to show true emotion. He always needed to put something between his emotion and me: a camera, a tape recorder, a type-written letter, an entire life. My dad wanted to have as little to do with me as possible, because, after all, a grown up is bound to get tired of playing with dolls. And even though an artist might never get tired of making art, sometimes a piece of art might assume a life of its own and decide to abandon the artist…
Still, I am grateful that this archive exists and is now in my hands – if not the original, at least a digitised version of it; it feels as if it’s re-linking me to my mom but also to myself. It’s as if my childhood memories with her were held captive, but now, after having been returned to their rightful owners, they have come back to life. It’s as if I was forced to partial amnesia and I have now started regaining my memory. I am remembering our first apartment; every single corner of it. I am remembering its mosaic and the pirouettes I would attempt on it with my ballet shoes. I am remembering my bedroom. Not all of it; just the sunlight that was coming through the window while my mom was getting me dressed on that morning of the day that I for the first time travelled unaccompanied by plane. I am remembering the clothes my mom used to dress me with. I am remembering their textures and the way they felt against my skin. I cannot recall any of the excursions, but the clothes; I can recognise them. The one thing I cannot recognise is me. Who is that kid? She is so beautiful and so expressive. Why didn’t anybody encourage her to act? I think there was an actress trapped inside that kid. I feel there is so little left of that kid in me now, but these last few days I feel as if it has awoken inside of me. I look at myself in the mirror and I can see that kid inside my face. The chubby cheeks are gone now but the eyes are the same. I can recognise her eyes. And I am striving to make contact, but that kid is mute. I have muted that kid. I have made her feel un-beautiful and she’s sad. So she will only stare at me with those eyes; not with anger but with resignation. So I look away, and I ignore her until I find the courage to look at her again and see her for who she really is – someone beautiful.
