RITUAL - Clouds From Above

A story behind documenting seas of cotton

Each time I am on a plane, I look out the window and I remember a story…and then I take a photo.

My mother told me that throughout her childhood, she would often have a reoccurring dream - seeing a sea of cotton below her. She said that, as a child, the dream had always confused her; at the time, she had never taken a plane and didn’t know what clouds looked like from above.

When she was 13, she met my father. As my parents have recounted to me many times (I like hearing this story), my father says that he immediately knew that he would marry my mother, unbeknownst to her. I suspect it was because she was, and still is, incredibly beautiful.

A couple years later, they met again, and when my father entered the room, a voice in my mother’s head said, “This man will be your husband.”

Dad and mom

Shortly afterwards, my father left Hong Kong to finish high school in Canada and so they exchanged letters, as phone calls were too costly for two young lovers. When he graduated, he wrote my mother a letter, a particular letter. In it he asked my mother to marry him. My father said he was young but that he would promise to do his best to care for her. She said yes.

When the time had come, my mother decided to leave the only life she had known to marry my father in Canada. She bought a plane ticket for the very first time, settled into her seat on the flight, and after the plane had taken off, she looked out the window to see a sea of cotton…the exact same sea as seen in her dreams for so many years. 45 years later, they are still married.

This is what life is like from above.