My parents were never married. I like to think this was largely for a sense of freedom from documents or legalities, of not wanting to be dictated to. Though this may also have been out of convenience, or fear. They met in Memphis, filling my first memories with magnolia blooms and rain streaming through the walnut trees in our yard. They separated when I was 12, not wanting to be controlled, or rooted too firmly in the ground.
I lived with my mother until I was 19, when I moved to Arizona to forge my own path independently. Of course, now they both live in Phoenix as well, living now in a place that has never been my home. I’m happy to say I still have a relationship with both of them, tense though it sometimes is. I can imagine them as they were when they met nearly 30 years ago, and I try to puzzle-piece myself out of them.
Did I get my fierce independence from my dad, who never wanted to work for anyone but himself? Am I empathic to a fault because of my mom, a caretaker who told me stories of emergency rooms and nursing homes? How much of their pasts are even recognizable in who they are today?
The changes and departures throughout our three lives have influenced all of us. The transience left little time for roots to settle and identities to coalesce. Seeing my parents as older adults and hearing stories of their lives before me, I am aware of the parts of them that inform me, and how becoming parents later in life has shaped them, too.
The uprooting and transplanting of place and relationships have shaped us all. What is now home is not the same as it was, and neither are the bodies we occupy. Without much of a family history to lean on, I’m recreating myself through this exploration of their shared and disjointed lives, creating a new genealogy.
Artist Bio
Kat Davis is an able bodied, mixed race artist who earned their BFA in Photography from Arizona State University in 2017. They are currently co-president of eye lounge, an artist’s collective, based in Phoenix, AZ. Davis uses the mediums of photography and collage to explore presentation and performance of individual identity and its relation to social, historical, and political boundaries. Their images have been exhibited nationally at Specto Art Space, Grand Arthaus, Rosenthal Gallery, Northlight Gallery, and have been published in Cumulus Photo, Soft Lightning, and OURS Photo Mag.