{"id":652,"date":"2014-10-20T08:02:58","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T12:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=652"},"modified":"2019-09-13T06:09:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T10:09:24","slug":"joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking for Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Looking<\/a>Do you ever get stuck looking for something? I mean really stuck like you can\u2019t stop yourself from scouring the house, searching the same spots over again, like you can\u2019t move forward until you find this one thing.
\nIt was stupid. I knew I was being unreasonable spending hours trying to find the snapshot of my son as a toddler holding a yellow umbrella. So much for my plan to Photoshop it with a shot of the stunning yellow tree dropping leaves in my driveway. After three hours of non-stop tearing the house apart it hit me: when you look for something, you always find something else. I found a twenty-dollar bill, my dead daughter\u2019s certificate of live birth, and the watch I was looking for last week. I would have to search for something else in order to find this photo. I fled the scene where now, upstairs and down, small piles of tossed stuff riddled every room.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking for joy,\u201d I said, bumping into a friend at the Ithaca Farmers\u2019 Market<\/a>. \u201cI need to photograph something joyful.\u201d It was gray and rainy. People were cold and cranky. The only things I was drawn to were the reflections of trees in the lake and the stacks of colorful produce. I took a couple of shots, bought lunch at the Macro Mamas<\/a> booth, and headed home. There were only a few hours until dinner with my daughter\u2019s old friend so I went back to searching for the photo.<\/p>\n

It was dark and raining outside Mitsuba Restaurant<\/a> as Marika\u2019s friend and I stood over the open trunk of his car. He pulled out something red and held it up. Marika\u2019s Ithaca Soccer jacket danced in the wind. There it was, the jacket she\u2019d worn so often before cancer. Was that really seven years ago? The familiar shade of red, the shape of it \u2013 it was almost like seeing Marika again. Close to tears, I grabbed it.<\/p>\n

Later that night I got lost in Photoshop. There was no thinking, no plan. I just played with the images I\u2019d shot that day, fascinated by the different reds in each photo. It didn\u2019t matter that the picture didn\u2019t match the story I\u2019d written. Warmly wrapped in my daughter\u2019s red jacket, I forgot about the son-with-umbrella photo that still remains to be found.<\/p>\n

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Do you ever get stuck looking for something? I mean really stuck like you can’t stop yourself from scouring the house, searching the same spots over again, like you can’t move forward until you find this one thing. It was stupid. I knew I was being unreasonable spending hours trying to find the snapshot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[220,289,287,294,288,291,292],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-finding-joy-after-loss","tag-joy-after-grief","tag-loooking-for-joy","tag-photography-for-healing","tag-search-for-joy","tag-when-you-look-for-something-you-never-find-it","tag-when-you-stop-looking"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t