The holidays are officially over. We finished “taking down” the decorations and packing them into the storage room this past weekend. I also processed the last roll of black and white film from the portrait sessions with my sons the week of Thanksgiving. There may be a roll or two of color candids, aka happy snaps, which I made with a point-and-shoot camera, but these are the last “serious” photographs I made. Photography was definitely part of my overall enjoyment of the holiday. As I looked at the scans this morning, the experience was different. Their eyes were upon me.

I’m taking Nietzsche’s oft-quoted phrase out of its original context and meaning, but his phrase “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back” came to mind. I thought that if I looked at their portraits long enough, I would stare back at myself. Somehow. And I did. I certainly “see” myself in my sons in terms of the physical and personality. I am reminded of Chuck Palahniuk’s assertion that “Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary” balanced with Richard Avedon’s aphoristic “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.”

I hope that someday, somehow, even without me knowing it, they will stare at their own portraits and see me. “The Child,” after all, as observed by Wordsworth, “Is father of the Man”