My 26th birthday was a week and a half ago. It was quiet and I spent most of my time with my mother. I know, I had quite the raging party with my mom. We cleaned the house and laughed at the memories of us throughout the years. Yep, real party animal over here! We started to look at my baby pictures and I became fixated on this one picture, my very first baby picture hours after my birth at George Washington Hospital in D.C. I have seen this picture about a trillion times but each time it looks unfamiliar to me. While looking at the baby picture I could pick out pieces of my present self. I could talk about the technology that allowed for me to see myself in the past when I was just a few hours old. I could talk about how I have aged and matured into a beautifully neurotic mess of a black woman. I could even talk about the history of my immigrant parents who created me and this moment in the past and their feelings about it. But, instead, I was fixed on my actual body in those few hours after birth. Hours after my birth, I was a tiny 3 lbs. 13oz. 26 years after my birth, I weigh in at around 162 lbs. I look completely different then almost unrecognizable. I am not saying that I don’t know who I am but I have no recollection of what I was thinking or feeling at the time of my birth and no real concept of self. Watching myself change each and every year has made me unrecognizable to some of my knowledge and emotions I once held but watching my body change seems like déjà vu. With knowledge and emotion you learn about things everyday through experience, things you didn’t know you will probably know or never know depending on your unique experience. Emotionally and intellectually, each unique experience changes you a little. Fundamentally, it is very difficult to change the physical body through experience. You are born with that body and you die with the same body only older at the time of death. When looking at my picture and compare it with my present self, in the picture I was smaller, I had a lighter complexion, and a head full of hair. My present self is taller, with a darker complexion, and more hair than I know what to do with. I have formed my sense of self and I am actively conscious of this action. It was really weird looking at my baby pictures but it allowed for me time to reflect on myself and take some time to admire how complex and continuous embodiment is through time.
Unruly Bodies 
I’ve never thought of embodiment in this way before- super interesting! This makes me think about how photos of us capture memories and experiences that we may not remember. There’s this great picture of my dad and I when I was 8–I was leaning on his shoulder resting one of my hands on his bald head. We both look happy, although because he’s bald I know that it was while he was sick…but I don’t remember that experience. I have to actively think, and remind myself of just what his voice sounded like. It’s weird thinking about now, having the context of this class to help me…it’s weird now thinking that I interacted with a body that no longer *is* a body…we do that all the time…I think it’s sometimes easy for me to forget that bodies at some point stop being bodies as we know them…if who we are as people, something driven by the brain, and if having bodies is not just the physical but also the mental… if the brain stops then we stop being bodies.
Wow. I just had a mini existential crisis.
This was a beautiful post! I think that’s great that you took some time to remember yourself with your mom. Sometimes I remember some of my thoughts from when I was younger, and it’s funny to think that I still agree with some those. Our transition of our minds feels like it’s been running a marathon, and somehow continues to do so.
I really enjoyed this post a lot and I feel that I can relate to your words. I often look at myself when I was younger and I wonder what happened to that little girl. People say that my face hasn’t changed a bit, which is nice because I thought I was a pretty cute kid. But a lot about me has changed, all the things I valued as a kid cease to exist. I know we all grow up and things change, its called becoming an adult. But what I am trying to say is that those are things of the past and it seems like you can’t get them back. Sounds like I am scared to aging, maybe I am a little, but do I miss the things I valued before.