PICTURES

Pictures are reminders that this moment will never come again. We are frozen in time for that moment. We will never be here with each other exactly like this again.

Collecting family photos has kept me connected since I left my family of origin so many years ago when I set out on a long adventure and created my own family. Looking at pictures of family members, warts and all, always helped buffer the intense homesickness that I felt, at times, that emphasized being so far from home.

Pictures can be the great pretenders. What one portrays in a photo is not always what is going on or appears what it is cracked up to be. For instance, my grandparents look quite happy and contented playing cards with my grandfather’s two sisters. This was shortly before their marriage. I doubt that their lives turned out like they wished or predicted on that blissful day. It’s good that their happy images were caught at the perfect moment and that they were innocent about what challenges life was about to bring through the years.

Pictures captured in our minds bring back instant memories as well. When I look at the picture of my dad trying to teach me to fly cast I can still smell the perfume of cedar trees in the heavily wooded area along the river we were wading in. I can feel the dense humidity of midsummer in Wisconsin. I hear the buzzing of thousands of mosquitoes as they swarmed around our sweaty bodies. I can still feel fish, that escaped the holding pockets of my waders, as they wiggled against my bare legs. I vividly remember trying to keep my balance on the slippery rocks and stay upright while trying to cast a line that continually got caught up in everything. I don’t have paper photos of so many of my adventures but I still hear words that have been spoken, see crystal images, and smell odors or fragrances that are inbeded in my memory.

These pictures are always with me and can never be destroyed by age and deterioration. They are always close by and recalled in an instant plus I don’t have to go to boxes to get at them or remember where I put them.