Tenderness is all we have left

Tenderness is all we have left.

Tenderness is a powerful force. It makes us feel things beyond what we can understand.
It is a radical act in a system that barely notices. It is an act of rebellion in an indifferent world, and I don’t want to become someone who is no longer moved by anything.

Older people have always stirred a tenderness in me. I can’t quite explain why. Perhaps it’s because I see them as so far removed from the world we live in today. A world that sometimes lacks tenderness, a world that can feel overwhelming. Maybe I find a kind of refuge in them.

I took these photographs at my grandparents’ home in Chiapas, Mexico. My grandfather appears in most of them. There is something about the way he looks that moves me. I think that every time I look at him, I see a child. As if he were standing in front of me at five years old, rather than eighty-five.

Maybe this is what tenderness allows us to do: to see beyond who someone has become, and catch a glimpse of who they once were. And perhaps, when people look at me, they might see her too. The little girl I once was, and the one who, in some way, is still here.