Memory

Federico and Betty taking a long walk near Milan.

In 1977, I received a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship to travel around the world photographing.

The Foundation would cover all my expenses and costs for a year.

It was a wonderful opportunity.

The problem was, although I was a good photographer, I was a terrified kid from a very sheltered upbringing with no self-confidence at all.

My very first stop was a visit with my Aunt Betty.

Aunt Betty had grown up in the same house that I did. In fact, when she was a kid, she lived in what would later be my room.  We, at least, had that in common. 

When she was in her early 20s, she left her first marriage, took her two small children and went to live in Italy, knowing almost no one there.

She was a true ‘free spirit’.

When I arrived at her small apartment in Milan, she had already been living there for nearly 20 years.

As soon as I got there, she opened my bags and found my prescription valium, a tranquilizer. 

“What are you doing with these?” she asked.

I explained that my shrink in NY had prescribed them.  (I said, I was a terrified kid).

“You don’t need any of this junk” she said, and flushed them down the toilet.

“There”, she announced. “That’s better”.

If I was terrified before, I was petrified now.

The next day she took me down to the train station and put me on the train to Venice.

“Go see the world” she announced, and left.

Arriving in Venice, I was terrified. I checked into the first hotel I could find at the Piazza San Marco.  The next day, I found my way back to the train station, Milan and her apartment.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. The very next morning, she took me back to the train station and put me on the train to Rome.  “Don’t come back for a week” she said, and waved a cheery goodbye.

A week later, i was back at her door, but a stronger person.

The following week we went back to the train station in Milan and I boarded the train for London.  It would be a year before I would return to Milan.  In the intervening time, I would hitch hike from London to Kathmandu overland across Central Asia, taking pictures and becoming the person I am today.  

It would, in fact, become 3 years before I ever went back to NY. After Nepal I went to photograph in the Middle East, then spent a year hitch-hiking across Africa; photographing all the time.  

When I was not traveling, I made the apartment in Milan my home. I built a darkroom there.  

All the ideas about using a video camera like a stills camera came from that experience.

Today I am in Venice, and yesterday we walked past the hotel in the Piazza San Marco where I spent my first terrifying night. I showed Lisa the window.

Before coming here, we were in Milan and spent two days with Aunt Betty, Federico (a Milanese attorney she married years later) and my cousin Glenn, who used to live in Hawaii, but has returned to care for his mother.

At 83, Betty has lost her memory.

“Do you live here”? she asked me no less than 100 times while we were there.

“I used to” I said, but I left.

“Why did you leave” she asked, also a hundred times.

“You threw me out” I said.

“Why did I do that?” she asked again and again and again.

“Because it was what I needed” I said.  

I was happy to repeat it as many times as needed because it was so true.

Betty is happy, even if she can’t remember why we are there or what happened jsut a few minutes ago.

“I lost my memory” she repeats over and over and over as she shuffles across the floor in her worn slippers. 

It is true. She has lost her memory. 

But fortunately,  I have not lost mine.