The first official post of my new website is dedicated to the apple of my heart, Nick. Felicidades!
It’s been five wonderful years, babe. And the road has had more hills and unmarked roads than we could have imagined.
I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t want to walk these roads with anyone else.
To many more, to so much more, to us,
Happy Anniversary!
Five Years of Unmarked Roads from Lisa Factora-Borchers on Vimeo.
I never earned a degree in photography, but I call myself a photographer.
No one ever taught me how to write creatively, but I call myself a writer in creative non-fiction.
There’s an illusion of permission, particularly in the arts, that you really should have the right kind of credential or background before you call yourself anything, before you utter the word “artist” or “poet” as a descriptor.
Of course credentials are helpful. There’s no dispute that a formal program or academic certificate offers professional development and advancement. But what I’m referring to is the community level, grassroots, center-of-the body need to create and express ourselves. And the unfortunate tendency is to self-dismiss our drive because we are not really “authorized” to do so. In other words, we – those without permission – dare not dip our toes into the creative process or artistic world. We let it slip away.
Who has the license to create? Who gives YOU permission to move, bend, and contort paper, pen, ideas, words, clay, textile, paint, beads, voice into something that expresses a peace/piece inside you?
Today I was talking to someone about photography and she asked me how I got into photography, if I had ever taken a class. I’d never taken a photography or lighting course. I never joined a club. Hell, I didn’t even own a camera until I took my first job after graduate school.
But, photography always moved me. The color. The symphony. The patience of waiting for the right moment. I always felt that photography was about observation and timing. And as the youngest of four children, my whole life was spent observing the world around me. There were three eyes on by body, I often thought. The two on my face and the one in my brain, clicking a camera to capture a moment. The way Andrew smiled at me right before I received my first kiss. The shadowed foot steps of my family when we walked the beach in 1992. The electric blue bubble letters on a sign that read “Vote for Lisa” when I ran for class president in 4th grade. My father’s hands as he drummed the steering wheel to old classic music in our Ram van.
The lesson plans of the camera are formidable and can be frustrating. There’s a slight math and science to the camera; a sophisticated vocabulary that must be decoded before one can smoothly operate the camera as a tool. But I stuck with it. It started as fascination, then grew to a hobby, then flourished into a passion. And then I committed to it. I dedicated myself to learning it, with my love for photography tucked under my elbow. That’s when I knew I was a photographer. I not only loved doing it. I committed myself to it.
It’s very similar to romantic relationships. The real-ness of the relationship, what legitimizes it, what affirms the relationship to be authentic and solid and heavy does not come from those outside looking in. It comes from the commitment of the people to one another, to the relationship.
You must commit to the process, to the art as action. You must commit yourself.
Photography, as an art, takes practice. It takes vision.
I told my friend to stop waiting for someone to give her permission. “If you keep waiting for someone to tell you that it’s ok to try something, you’ll never start. And the only person waiting and sitting in disappointment is yourself. There’s no permission needed. Just start creating.”
I thought about that for a few hours afterward.
I thought about how long I waited to try. I waited for someone to tell me that I had an eye for photography. That day never came. It’s no wonder either. The “you have a good eye” compliment never came because I wasn’t DOING anything and therefore had nothing to show; nothing for anyone to reflect upon, critique, or admire. When you wait for permission, you wait in stillness.
Why did I wait for permission? Why do we figure we need to earn something EXTRA before we allow ourselves to draw or sketch or, dammit, even just TRY something creative. To raise our fingers to an unfamiliar block of clay, an untouched canvas, or a blank page takes a steel rod of bravery.
We are moving into an age where the single nomad, crushing himself into a starving corner is no longer the picture of an artist or master creator. Today, artists are single mothers with two jobs
and a bus pass. Photographers can be world travelers or lifetime small town dwellers. The elitism is bleeding out. Art is everyday. Artists should be as common as a worn kitchen table.
We may grow old. We may lose that fresh inspiration that wakes us up in the middle of the night. But the goal of creative work is not to be legendary or even remembered. The goal is to be free.
I’ve been a writer all my life. I cannot remember a time when my right hand did not grasp a pen and moved left to right on a page, documenting the significant and insignificant morsels of living.
A few years ago, I was struck by lightning and had the tremendous opportunity to work with make/shift magazine, and with Jess Hoffman, and slowly begin learning about the fundamentals of editing.
Editing has its moments of excruciating difficulty. It is not the free flowing creative river that is writing. It can be an unpredictable whiplash that stings every time you work with a new writer. I’ve had the magnificent pleasure of learning from many different kinds of writers and editors and, today, thought of the countless similarities I began seeing in my relationship with God and my relationship with editing.
This is what I found…
The Twelve Startling Similarities Between God and the Right Editor
1) The Editor works with you and your ideas, trying to observe and guide and not intercede.
2) When you are excessively verbose, the Editor gets to the heart of what you are saying.
3) The Editor is patient, but nudges you from time to time.
4) The Editor knows that the writer must equally trust the Editor and believe in herself.
5) The Editor has worked with so many different kinds of writers, you know there’s nothing that the Editor hasn’t seen.
6) The Editor knows what is sacred and carefully addresses issues close to your heart.
7) The Editor has a vision, but it is co-authored.
8) Ultimately, the Editor wants your best self, your best work, and works with you to make that manifest.
9) Often times in conversation with the Editor, you realize hidden truths underneath a lot of rubble.
10) “I know what I know, what do YOU think?”
11) The Editor will never give you an assignment that is too large for you to handle.
12) The Editor has a way of arranging things that leaves you mystified, dumbstruck, and grateful.
So, to all the writers out there: I wish you not only deep, rich soil to till your work in, I wish you a gracious and visionary editor who believes in your ability to fruitfully open a truth for yourself to share with the world.
Though I am a main subject of this blog, I have never written a post. However, on the occasion of my Grandpa’s death, I wanted to write something in his honor.
I love you Grandpa Borchers.
Nick
Reflections on the death of my Grandpa
At times of death we are always advised to trust God.
What does this mean?
If trusting in God means things will happen as we want,
then my trust is shattered.
I want to hear another story from Grandpa about working at Stolle’s;
I want to ask my Uncle Bob if the Reds can turn it around this year; and
I want to laugh with my cousin Nathan about random college stories.
Obviously, trusting God is not getting what we want.
So, what is it?
Ultimately, trusting in God is believing that life is bigger than what we see,
that our lives do not end.
I believe all three of these family members live on in me.
Grandpa lives on as I laugh at a corny joke.
Bob lives on as I squeeze every bit of excitement out of a normal day.
Nathan lives on as I experience the sheer joy of being with others.
Our loved ones don’t just live on in metaphorical ways.
They see what we do not, they see the big picture of our lives.
They understand the sadness we are experiencing now is just a phase,
a small blip in what will ultimately be unending joy and peace with God.
And when I pay close enough attention,
for a brief instant, I can feel their presence still with me.
They are not with me in the same way, but they are still with me.
The veil between me and them is thin and even transparent at times.
So, I know this summer on a hot afternoon
as I sit down with Isaiah to watch a Reds-Pirates game,
we will be surrounded by three other big baseball fans.
This belief in life allows me to truly trust in God during this difficult week.
I was cleaning the office and found one of my baby pictures.
It was eerie. I compared my picture with Isaiah.
Oh my…
There are days where I wonder if there are some unexplained things about the relationship between mother and child. I mean, think about it, a growing human being forms his bones, blood, and organs INSIDE a woman’s body. Everything the mother is, quite literally, is given to her child. It’s quite extraordinary.
There are days when I just look at the little Meatball and wonder, how did this kid ever fit inside me? How did he come from me?
Well, I soon found the explanation.
While Nick was in El Salvador, I was busy trying to clean our office. The one room that is consistently neglected because, since no one else but Nick or I ever go in there, it never meets the “we should pick up the living room before so and so come over,” or “we’re having company over so make sure you scrub the toilet and vaccuum,” requirements.
So, while I was hauling boxes of recycled paper out of the house and pouring through old papers, I came across one of my baby pictures. I saw it and I just stared. It was almost eerie.
It was the same feeling when Nick took this picture of me and Isaiah in the hospital. It was a feeling like, “I’ve seen this picture before somewhere, but I can’t think of what picture it is.”
I found the picture.
You tell me.
Is there some unexplained force that binds me with Isaiah?
I don’t know.
But since we look like almost identical twins from birth, I’m open to anything.
There was no way to describe how nervous I was when I first met Nick’s Grandpa Borchers back in 2004. I’ve never met anyone’s grandparents before and the idea of meeting them was so nerve-wracking, I even called my mom beforehand to talk out my jitters.
She didn’t help much. “Oh, this is a very big occassion. Make sure you wear a very nice outfit. Address them properly. Be yourself, but don’t talk too much….” The suggestions went on and on.
That only added to the anxiety. Even my Dad made a follow-up call when I got home. “Well,” he sounded like one of my grad school buds after I went out on a date, “what did you end up wearing?”
Dick was sitting in his recliner when I timidly walked over to be introduced. My parents advice was ringing in my head. His smile and handshake put me at ease and I let out a quick breath of relief that I got through the first five minutes. I doubt he ever knew how nervous I was to meet him, so I doubt he knew how much I appreciated that big, sincere smile that he gave me. I’m already a fan of electric smiles and infectious laughs, and I honestly don’t think there are many better than Dick’s. I can see his smile in his children, especially Rog and Linda, and it always makes me smile in recognition of its origin.
But my favorite memory of him had to have been when Nick and I came back from Nicaragua in 2007 after doing a mission trip together. Nick and I were separated into different groups and I was sent to dig ditches, deep into the earth, to help in the process of making latrines.
I could barely pick up the equipment, it was so heavy, and when I lowered myself into the ditch, I was, literally, in a hole so deep I couldn’t feel the wind at all. And then I started to feel like I was baking in the soil. The sun was beating on me and no wind could reach me. I tried to think positive thoughts, but the labor was just too intense for me. After a few hapless attempts, I started coughing and got dizzy and climbed out. I returned to my ditch several times, but it was as obvious as a cloud on a perfect blue sky that I was not making much progress. I defended myself to Nick, “I was BAKING, baking I tell you, in that ditch. I felt like I was going to pass out!”
On our first trip to Russia after Nicaragua, Nick promptly told his grandparents of my suffering and how I was clearly not cut out for manual labor in the sun.
I didn’t know how Dick would react to that story of my wimpy-ness, given that he was a hard-working farmer who could have at one time probably dug ten ditches in a day.
He loved it.
Over the years, every holiday or visit when I leaned over to greet him and shake his hand, he’d hold on to my hand for an extra second and ask, “Have you dug any ditches lately?” His hearty laugh followed when I smiled and emphatically shook my head NO and retold the details of my failure as a dirt digger. He really got a kick out of that. And Nick always got a kick out of his Grandpa getting a kick out of it.
I only knew Dick for the past six years, the last years of his life. Oftentimes, I marvel at how we can meet people in the last turn of their life, just as we are in the main throttle of our own. What a gift it is.
In a loving and resting peace, I imagine him now. And it’s because of that mega-watt smile he shared with me that first day back in 2004 that I often try to smile at newcomers and make others comfortable in my home. It’s always the small things in life that make a difference and leave an impact on others.
I’m just one of the many, I’m sure, who were touched by his life, family, and kindness.
Have you ever cried while driving?
That’s probably not the safest thing to do.
I mean, it’s not as dangerous as drinking and driving or texting while driving, but CRYING has its own level of wrong, too.
I realized this as I was wiping away tears this morning after I took Isaiah to the doctor. The little Meatball is having a terrible week. Probably the worst in his four moths of existence.
Isaiah’s been struggling with moderate eczema for quite some time and Nick and I have been playing detective, trying to figure out what triggers it or how we can relieve it. Last month we figured out that the space heater in his room is the culprit.
So we unplugged the darn thing and layered him in extra shirts and socks when he went to bed.
And then spring came.
His eczema flared last week and I wondered if maybe it’s something in his milk. So I took out 99% of dairy in my diet.
No change.
This week, I gave up eggs. No change.
Poor little guy looked miserable. And I was having a breakdown watching his splotches begin to spread over his head, face, torso and arms. His little uncoordinated hands were scratching his head and belly while he cried and I would try to comfort him while I bawled myself.
What a mess.
So I took him to the doctor for three things: eczema, possible teething, and a bad cough.
Isaiah laughed and wiggled as the doctor examined him and thought the tongue stick to examine his mouth was the greatest thing ever and laughed in the doctor’s face.
Despite the laughs, he had a low grade fever and his eczema needs some serious attention. I fired away with questions and more questions. Without Nick there to calmly interject something very Borchers-esque, my motor mouth went nuts. Luckily, the doctor didn’t mind my fretting. (I assume fretting mothers are quite common in a pediatric setting.)
So, I hauled my 17.5lb elephant back to the car and got in the driver’s seat to head to Rite Aid to pick up his prescriptions.
I kept glancing in my rear view mirror to see his baby mirror. He looked so much like Nick, but covered in red patches of itch, and handled everything so well. His skin, fever, and cough coupled with Nick’s departure got the best of me and my tear ducts. And that’s when the bawling happened and my vision blurred from crying.
And that’s why I am writing to caution all who cry while driving – it’s just as hazardous as texting.
You can’t see ANYTHING.