nappies - a retrospective

this is me with my mother a long time ago when instead of bleaching hair, crisp white sanitised nappies were de rigueur. at least in my world.

last night i saw this photo for the first time. it's almost a faded bastion of a lost world. it was given to my daughter as a series of family portraits for her coming of age. it's official yet simultaneously surreal, raen miro is now a woman in the eyes of society & so the commencement of the handing down of family heirlooms/bric a brac begins. the traditions are passed, stories are told & shared.

when she was an infant, we too floated in a framed sea of freshly washed nappies which flapped wildly in the wind permeating their happy apple cider vapours into the breeze on the line at the little house i bought when still wet behind the ears at university with her dad, before we parted ways a year later. that is where i gave birth to her after hiding up a hedge seeking to divert the inevitable after being in labour for the longest time because i didn't want to push. eventually i was coaxed down & the rest is history. twenty one years ago yesterday.

i can still smell the vinegar warmly whitened by the sun's deep caress.