Family lore says my older sister called our grandfather “Pop-i” when she learned to speak, and “Mom-i” naturally followed. Mom-i died when I was a teenager. Most of what I know about her comes from childhood memories and my mother’s stories. Memories are often unreliable, and our present selves greatly influence how we recall the past. Who was she really? Can I hope to know her objectively?

So much of her is woven into me. My Mom-i passed down her stubbornness, independence, light eyes, dainty hands, and sewing skills to my mother and me. A lingering feeling of not belonging — a recurring theme in my life — seems to have been part of theirs as well.

With help from three generations of women in my family — my mother, sister, and nieces — I recreated scenes from my childhood, which I then photographed. They included Thanksgiving dinner at Mom-i’s house, Mom-i in her living room, and Mom-i at her sewing table. Mom-i was a prolific quilter; my mother, a prolific quilt starter. I used my mother’s unfinished quilt squares and the costumes I used in this project to make my own first quilt… still unfinished.

As I have since I was a child, I took my camera into nature to make sense of things. I chose to set these recreations among Northern California’s redwood trees because they have long been a sanctuary for me. They also reflect the theme of the project. The trees pass an incredible amount of information to their seedlings underground — some we understand, and some remain a mystery.