Memory Motel #66

September 8th, 2025

I laugh the loudest when Ana makes the joke that Etel is an anti-colonist and that is why she only speaks in Portuguese. I laugh the loudest to signal I am in on it too, that the United States and its global stain is mostly an embarrassment and English has historically been a tool of the oppressor. We laugh and we say Etel’s refusal to steep to those levels of language is an articulation of her politics. I laugh because it is a joke and my being in on it is an articulation of my politics.

It’s important to be the first one comfortable enough to criticize the United States when you are the only U.S. immigrant at the table and it is important to be proud of Etel when people smile and shrug while patting me on the back to say “Well she is Brazilian!” I return the smile, and earnestly, I do swell with pride to have my daughter(s) born in this incredible country. I love that Etel is bilingual before she can even define bilingual. On the edges of that pride and my comfort, though, I still occasionally shrink in desperation to hear my own language echoed back to me.

When I speak to Etel in English and she responds in Portuguese, we are engaged in a kind of dialogue of cross-national semantics and understanding. Seamlessly we blend two languages in a back-and-forth to-and-fro, which on one hand, is frankly quite cool, and on the other often breaks my heart in a chilled quiet way I’m unsure how to claim.

English is my first language and it is the only way I truly know how to say something like I love you and understand its nuance. It’s English in which I recognize how blurry sounds and syllables come together to massage a nebulous cloud of feeling into language that can be expressed into words, which hopefully enters another human mind in the form of comprehension. English is how I know to explain to Etel it’s time for bed, because even though she thinks she is not tired, her body needs to rest now. English is how I know how to love someone else and English is how I know how to parent her.

We live in Brazil, and on a purely pragmatic level, Portuguese is the dominant language of Etel’s life. Though she can understand English, most of the people she interacts with on a regular basis cannot. I understand her current refusal to speak English as a very well-reasoned practical one, and of course, purely temporary too - eventually she’ll return my language back to me. But still, on my edges, I am impatient and ache to hear my own words returned back, which is another way to say that the larger Brazil looms in my daughter, the smaller, more separate, I feel in its shadow.

Often in Brazil when someone hears me speak to Etel in English they ask with an impressed shock whether she can understand me. This type of interaction is always kind, but when it comes from family or friends, I still retort with a small annoyance and say that of course she can, I am her one of Mothers, English is my language, Etel is American too. And then I instantly recoil, worried I am too quick to defend her American-ness, of which I barely identify myself (I only became a naturalized citizen when I was 17), but that it feels strange to claim her Canadian-ness (I can’t legally pass down my Canadian citizenship to Etel unless we live there because of Canadian citizenship regulations), and that to be a defender of my daughter’s status as a U.S. Citizen at all, especially right now, when the U.S. is in the midst of such an incredibly dark period, particularly as it relates to access to who has the right to claim themselves as American, feels horrible and against my own beliefs. And then I spiral and try to find the source of what it's really about.

Etel is nearly three years old and what’s it’s really about may be that I am still trying to reinforce to her, to me, and to everyone in whatever audience we are in, that though she is and will always belong only to herself, she is also my own. When Etel says a word in Portuguese I can’t understand and consequently breaks down in a tantrum of frustration because of it, my rational impulse may be to help her speak the word again slowly or try and show me what she means, but my emotional one is to grab her and say, please don’t go where I can’t follow.

Witnessing myself as a mother at all, but particularly as a mother to Etel, particularly in a country and a language that is not my own, is an ongoing work. And like all my ongoing work, it is one to which I look to photography.

Making pictures with Etel is a way of realizing our ongoing tether. Family photographs are a way of stopping time to get a closer look and make it last, and it is also a way begging for proof - “There was that afternoon, when things were still good between us.” I am engaged in an ongoing practice of hopefully slowing everything down, and I am also engaged in the practice producing unreliable proof. There is nothing true about a photograph, but I hope in the unreliable proof lies possibility and at least a question.

For today, three recent pictures with Etel and our ongoing tether.

UPCOMING CLASSES:

Upcoming online classes I am teaching which are coming up, including my personal favorite current class I teach which is starting next week:

• The Poetic Photograph (Wednesdays, Sept 17–Oct 22, 2025 12- 2pm) through Strudel Media Live, 5 weeks.

  • I just wrapped my first session of this in June, and it may be my new favorite class to teach. The first session sold out quick, so we’re offering it again, with just a few slots left.

• Looking Inward: Photographing Family (Sunday, Oct 12, 2025) through Strudel Media Live, 1 session.

  • A fun & quick one hour workshop that is part lecture and part guidebook on how and why we make pictures of the people we love the most.

• Photography 2: Image & Workflow (Thursdays, Oct 9 - Nov 6, 2025 10am - 2pm) through ICP, 5 weeks.

  • Intermediate level course, following up on basics of digital photography.

• Photography 3: Project & Portfolio (Saturdays, Nov 8 - Dec 13, 2025 10am - 2pm) through ICP, 5 weeks.

  • Advanced digital photography course.