Book of Days

I’ve recently become a bit enamored with old paper moon photographs: the ones that were taken at state and county fairs and at resorts and beach towns. Like the one above: that’s my Aunt Anne as a little girl, posing with the neighbor, who was more like a second mother than a neighbor. So much so, in fact, that both my mom and my aunt called her “Mamam,” just like Mama but with an extra M. And there they are, Mamam and Annie, a snapshot caught in time at the paper moon photo set at Coney Island.

I look at pictures like this and wonder what happened before and after this one moment was captured. They’re different than the thousands of digital photos we take with our phones nowadays and never think twice about. Someone––Mamam, probably––said, “C’mon, Annie, let’s take a picture!” She would have said it in Italian, and they went in and paid the photographer’s assistant and then they sat down at that paper moon set and sat still and perhaps the photographer’s flash exploded just as the camera’s shutter opened for a split second and there is that precise moment in time, set on paper. It astonishes me. And I get to see Mamam, whom I’ve heard countless stories about but who died when I was only 5 years old, and I get to see a version of my dear aunt that I never knew: the Annie that was a child.

It’s Valentine’s Day today and those paper moon shots have particular resonance. I look at the only one we have in our family history (this one), and I look at the ones I see online, too, and I wonder the very same thing about each picture, the same thing I wonder about the one of Mamam and Aunt Anne. With the folks I don’t know, I wonder, too, about the context, and about the relationships. Were the two dating? Did they get married and have kids and live to be a hundred years old? If it’s a paper moon photo of two men, or of two women, I wonder were they just friends? Were they in love? Was the photo a secret token of love that couldn’t be expressed openly? Each year on the Convivio Book of Days Calendar for February we say the same thing for Valentine’s Day: Where love takes root, let it grow. Whatever Valentine’s Day means for you: the love of friends and family, the love of a special someone… I wish that for you.

This year, Valentine’s Day is accompanied by the Carnevale Season, which began this past weekend in Venice and in other places that celebrate these days before the start of Lent. In Venice it is often a matter of masks and Baroque high fashion, and it will all lead up to its culmination on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins. The day is best known as Mardi Gras, celebrated in New Orleans and Mobile and Key West and other celebratory places. This year, Mardi Gras arrives on the First of March. On the Second, Lent will begin and a more somber, reflective period of 40 days will take the place of the revelry of Carnevale. But for now… we celebrate. It just happens to be the conclusion of the Chinese Lunar New Year festival, too: that comes tomorrow with Lantern Festival: the first full moon to follow the beginning of the lunar new year celebration.

Let’s wrap up with more paper moon photographs. Clicking on any photograph in this blog will make it larger so you can see it better, so feel free to click away. Thank you to all who sent paper moon photos in! I’m sorry, I didn’t get to use everyone’s, but I really appreciate all that were sent. Cross my heart. Happy Valentine’s Day.