The Divine Miss S

I first met Stevie in 6th grade when she moved here from Utah. We spent countless nights on the phone over the years giggling about boys, school, & the future. We didn't have very many classes together in high school but she was always counted as one of my nearest & dearest friends. I was so proud of her when she received her degree in OT & moved to South Carolina to start a job immediately afterward.
Just a short 10 months later, Stevie suffered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. In fact, she coded 3 times during her time in ICU & there were questions of whether or not she would suffer permanent damage if she even lived. If you read the odds of survival you'll understand the grim prognosis the doctor's gave to her family (at one time they gave her only a 10% chance). Against all those grim odds, she survived.
The only visual evidence of these events are some tiny scars on her arm where they placed needles for an arterial blood gas and some scar tissue in her nostrils from the long term placement of tubes. On the inside however she still has tiny clots in her lungs that appear on xray and she did unfortunately suffer some permanent damage to one side of her heart.













The day that I did these photos, Stevie & I had a "lady date" & went to lunch together for the first time in seven years! There were some tears while we talked about what she's been through but there was a lot of laughter, too. After a mild depression during the earliest part of her recovery, she has joined a support group with other people who have suffered from pulmonary embolisms. I know that all the love and support she has received from her family and friends means the world to her but I'm happy that she has people to reach out to that know exactly what she's been through. I loved hearing her talk about the future. This was an event that changed her life & will continue to shape her life forever but she still has the same positive outlook as she was when I met her in middle school. She's considering a career path involving possibly speaking about her condition to raise awareness.
No matter what she decides, I am so incredibly proud of her & so proud to call her a life long friend - I can't wait to see all the amazing things her future holds.

Stevie, let's not wait another seven years for the next "lady date"!

My So-Called Life

It is like 1994 every Monday night in my house since Sundance channel started running episodes of My So-Called Life. I was watching the episode where Angela (Claire Danes) & the gorgeous Jordan (Jared Leto) kiss after she finds out he can't read (gasp!) but he can serenade her with a song that she thinks is about her (but we later find out was about his car *insert eye roll here*).

Yes, it sounds so unbelievable (did anyone actually go to school with guys as good looking as Jared Leto, really?!?) but I like the simple honesty of what it's like to fall head over heels for someone for the first time. I like how at the end of the episode Jordan says: "She knows too much about me or something ... not really, but she makes too big a deal out of everything. She makes everything too complicated."

I like that even though it sounds pretty unbelievable, there is so much truth about being a teenager.
The simple truth is that I was an Angela - & so was every other girl at age fifteen: lying on your bed daydreaming about how love would happen, tongue tied around the guy you want to be in love with, & the overwhelming disappointment when you find out love doesn't happen like you thought that it would.
The real truth is that I was much more interesting at age fifteen than I am now. I was a dreamer. My ideas on how it would feel to fall in/be in love were carefully constructed from the movies I watched, lines I highlighted in the books I read, & from the songs I selected for the ever-important mix tape.

Yes, at fifteen I made a big deal out of everything; I made everything much too complicated. I thought it was the worst thing in the world to have to lay awake at night dreaming of love & career & life in general; at the time being fifteen was a tragedy, waiting on my "real life" to begin. I look back now, remembering all the dreams I had for myself & how 'first love' felt, & how I was beginning to define myself. I was passionate about everything, nothing was impossible.
Every Monday night, I turn to the Sundance channel and it's a 1994 episode of My So-Called Life. But really, I'm revisiting 2001 for an hour because I know that the real tragedy would be forgetting what it was like to be fifteen.


copyright Kyra Leseberg Photography 2011

Sweet Summertime

Summer is just so thick with nostalgia. I can't think of summer without associating it with childhood - because really: the 2 go hand in hand.
Early on it was K-Mart jelly shoes, spinning around in the yard with a sparkler on the 4th of July, popsicles, running through sprinklers, & catching fireflies in mason jars.
Later, summer became cut-off shorts, flip flops, bologna sandwiches, listening to the radio late at night with the windows open & listening to the hum of crickets between songs.
Later still, I remember ceiling fans, cotton sheets, sweet tea, making airwaves out car windows, & watching my shadow grow longer across sidewalks.
I'm not sure of the exact moment that it happened, but summer became nostalgia. By May each year, I'm ready to pull my flip flops from the back of the closet. I busy myself washing the thin cotton sheets, throwing them on the bed to air dry under the ceiling fan. Soon after I'm brewing sweet tea, slicing lemon wedges -- dusting off the rocking chair so I can sit & enjoy it - all the while summer songs are playing like a soundtrack on the radio.
It's an annual ritual; a learned response over the years: tasks to perform, songs to sing - all in honor of summer.
As a kid, summer equaled freedom; long languid days, heat rising off the asphalt, time to savor every moment because while some days passed lazily like slow moving traffic -- you'd blink & miss it all.
I smile in rememberance when the grill is going in the evening & the fireflies start appearing, when "Boys of Summer" comes on the radio, the way the flip flops I've had since I was 14 years old molds to my feet perfectly. It's all so familar & so welcoming.
I invite summer back each year with open arms as my oldest, dearest friend who shares (& keeps!) my greatest secrets; my inifinite moments. I tell summer to pull up a rocking chair & grab some of that sweet tea because we have a lot of catching up to do.
---& it's good to know that frozen lemonade cups & running through sprinklers is just as fun at age 24 as it was at age 8. {a celebration of SummeR}
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Here's my favorite summer photo from last year - taken in Lapakahi State Park on the Big Island:















So now I wanna hear from you! Head over to Kyra Leseberg Photography on Facebook & "like" the page if you haven't already! Then, e-mail me at kyraleseberg@yahoo.com telling me your favorite thing about summer! I'll pick an entry Sunday, June 19th to win a free half hour photo session redeemable any time before July 31st!