Private and Public

This picture was taken at a family vacation in Nags Head, North Carolina. It was a neighboring house, we actually rented a three story house with a couple of family friends. Thinking of ways to document work without exploiting someone can be a challenging thing. There are still grey areas when you ask people questions from a certain period of time that are repressed. I have a feeling that it will be a daunting task trying to open people up. I want to display and uncover a piece of myself without letting the whole world know everything. Sharing some secrets are fine, but some secrets are meant to be kept so you could be sane. Having to show this documentary work to class and making something so private public might take a toll on me. I'm still in this stage where I want to interview my mom and dad without asking too many private questions. I have a feeling that some of their replies will be biased and they'll be expected to say something that i would want to hear.

My doting mother, especially, will feel uncomfortable asking her about the choices she made when she reunited with my father. She took a health care course profession in midwifery and helped out many underprivileged women. I used to remember her telling me stories about how she and other students would help out women who lived in slums give natural birth. The most unexpected child birth that she told me was this lady who was seventy (or somehow older) years old. I'm hoping this would be a start for me to ask her these questions working with women. I don't recall much on the years while she studying for her profession since I was about five or six years old. But I do remember countless books she had to read, I think she might have one in our attic. Also I want to know if she enjoyed what she was doing and if she could go back to school, would she have done it all over again. As for my dad, I'm thinking of either starting at the time he left to join the Navy or his years here in America alone without his family to support him.