Youngest first! These school portraits provide snapshots in time when my three daughters dove into life. The originals were destroyed when our home burned down in 2010, so these are digitalized copies from those halcyon days before the fire.
All photos are from the Seattle Public Schools in the northern half of Seattle, Washington. Enjoy!
Talia Katayama (now Bass), my beautiful, talented, and sensitive stepdaughter since before her birth. I helped deliver her at home on the floor and helped raised her up, too.
Talia, age 5, in Kindergarten, Adams Elementary School, Fall of 2007.
Talia, age 6, First Grade, Whittier Elementary School/Spectrum Program, Fall of 2008.
Kate Bass, my beautiful, wild, and athletic daughter, adopted in Washington State 6 weeks after her birth in Virginia. Well, she came to live with us Orca Landing Cooperative Household in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle as our daughter at about 6 weeks old. The adoption process itself took a few short months.
Kate, age 8 (almost 9), Third Grade, B.F. Day Elementary School, Fall of 2007.
Kate, age 9 (almost 10), Fourth Grade, B.F. Day Elementary School, Fall of 2008.
Morgan Bass, my beautiful, zany, and creative daughter and first child. I helped deliver her at home in an urban apartment home birth.
Morgan, age 13, Eighth Grade, Salmon Bay Middle (Alternative) School, Fall of 2007.
Morgan, age 14, Ninth Grade, Roosevelt High School, Fall of 2008.
Photos purchased from the professional photographers contracted with by Seattle Public Schools, scanned and digitalized and copied here.
NOTE: This photo-essay originally appeared as 3 separate photo-mini-essays on my older blog, Cultivate and Harvest, on New Year’s Day, Thursday, January 1, 2009, at the following:
http://cultivateandharvest.blogspot.com/2009/01/talia-katayama-my-stepdaughter-since.html,
I revised, merged, edited, and reposted here as one piece this March 13, 2012. Thank you.
William Dudley Bass
1 January 2009
13 March 2012
12 June 2019
Seattle, Washington
P.S. from June 2019: Morgan Hannah changed their name to Dylan Blair back in 2018. There’s quite a story behind their doing so with roots in arcane family history and birth names and the use of singular-plural non-binary pronouns and so forth, but details for another tale to tell. I love my child anyway. We all have names, and we are not our names. There are times, however, while upon certain journeys of initiation or in the wake of such transformation we earn the right to choose our own names. Accept. Forgive. Love. And Hug. Aye, hug each other while y’alla still alive and aware!
Copyright © 2009, 2012, 2016, 2019 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.
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