My Parents’ 50th Anniversary

I went home.

Even though I’ve been in New York for many years, in many ways I’m still a southern boy at heart. My parents raised me, my brother and three sisters in an area just west of New Orleans. I’ve been back to visit on occasion, but this visit was different. It was to celebrate my parents 50th wedding anniversary.

The celebration was a bit belated partly due to Hurricane Katrina, which obviously changed the lives of everyone living in the Gulf region, and which put a temporary hold on our travel plans. The other reason was that three of us “kids” are now married and scattered across the globe with families of our own. It took a lot of coordination to bring everyone together for this occasion, but we were finally able to do it. In fact, one of my sisters and her husband surprised my parents by driving from an assignment in Mexico, so that we could all be together.

Ulysses and Aldine were married at an early age. Dad was an athlete of 18, and my mom was an advanced student still in school at age 16. They moved in with my mom’s parents, who already had a large family. There was minimal electricity in the house, not enough room for the number of people living there, and other conveniences were at a premium. But my mom’s parents loved their new son in-law, and he helped expand the house’s living spaces. Since he knew some electrical work (learned from his own dad), he helped rewire their home and bring their place into the 20th century.

Clearly, my mom and dad didn’t always have things easy. But they stuck together even though they were very young and knew barely anything about life. As each new baby was born to them, they learned a lot more about life than they expected. And through it all, they gave so much back to us — a good work ethic, an honest concern for others, a sense of spirituality and who we are as people, and a desire to always do the best we could with whatever power we had in our hands at any given point in our lives. I’m proud to say we’ve each lived by those simple tenets. And now some 50 years later, even though my dad has been through strokes and a broken hip, and my mom has suffered severe health issues of her own, I know my parents are even happier and more satisfied than ever.

For this occasion we were all together again, along with our mates. My brother and his wife brought their two sons, the youngest one meeting his grandparents for the first time and whose middle name is also “Ulysses” (making three of us with this unusual name). My mom cooked meals for us that I haven’t tasted in years. Mmm-mmm-MMMM!!! And we stayed up late talking about the lives they shared, and how they were most recently able to help their community post-Katrina. And sometimes, as families do, we all just talked about nothing at all. It was awesome. I loved every minute of it.

Here’s something else that struck me: My dad and mom are in many respects the same two people today that they were at age 18 and 16. The same two kids. Perhaps that ought to be incredibly obvious. But as a photographer today, I can now see the young people inside of them that I never really knew when I was a kid myself living under their roof. That’s family. That’s love. And that’s what it meant to me to go home. I have so much to be thankful for, when it comes to my parents and family.

Jenni and I have a lot to be thankful for as photographers. We get to meet so many amazing couples and families, along with their children and friend! Our own experiences teach us that artfully captured photos of the people you love the most will only grow in meaning and in value as time goes by.

A special thanks to Phil Colwart for these very special family photos.

More with my family.