On her last visit, my mother brought over a box of things that she’d saved over the course of my childhood: early drawings, high-school term papers, first stories and notes. Looking forward to a trip down memory lane, I began to sort through them. Within moments two things became evident. Firstly, that my mother went through all of my trash (a love letter from my first boyfriend, which includes the depressingly spelled “arection” proves this point). And secondly, she apparently chose only to fish out the things that would most embarrass me.
Where are all the well-executed drawings, the A plus papers, the naive and yet endearing journal entries? They are long gone, and in their place exist all manner of horrors. A grade school essay on Goya (don’t ask) is particularly misinformed, and a drawing from my early years, in which I’ve lovingly adorned a list that my mother herself has written, is earnest enough to break your heart.
The list, entitled “Stuff That Makes Mom Happy”, places “being alone” and “working” in the top slots, and goes on to include fishing, running, and ballet class in consecutive order. (Spending time with her daughter is, needless to say, conveniently missing.) My mother has also contributed her own cartoon horse to the edge of the drawing, and with it’s back to the viewer, the horse is quite obviously running away.
And yet, I am a glutton for punishment. Anyone who’s ever eaten at my house knows that the only plates I use are ones left over from my childhood; plates that I drew nearly everyday after school, and that my mother shipped away to the Make-A-Plate company to have laminated. A kind of pictorial history, each plate is an unbiased - and frequently embarrassing - account of how I viewed my life then. Here are some of my (and my mother’s) favorites.
“Untitled”: My first self-portrait, circa 1985.
“Dad’s stuff”: Self-explanatory.
And my all-time favorite…
“Life’s Short Start Fishishing”: Both “fishishing” and “tipicle”, two of the most notorious spelling errors of my life (bad spelling is a recurring theme for me), appear in this work. What makes this plate really special, however, is the constant in each of the cartoon’s frames. In LA, on a “tipicle smoggy day”, and in the unspoiled Sierras, on a “tipicle great day”, one thing stays the same. Apparently, it didn’t matter what kind of day it was … because there I am, sitting inside and watching T.V. in both places.
Agatha French is a Los Angeles based writer, and the (getting a little old to be an) intern at the magazine Edible LA.