The other day my daughter was sitting on my lap for something like 45 minutes to an hour looking at pictures in her digital photo album. It’s one of her favorite things to do and she seems to think that’s all a computer is for. She also has a photo book that tells the story of her entire life so far (all two and a half years of it) which she sometimes carries around and often demands that we go through together. You could argue that she likes looking at pictures of herself, but I think it is more about wanting to remember things that have already become blurred in her mind or about which she is still just beginning to understand. Our ability to record things has come a long way in just the past few years, but there is something about those printed pictures, whether in a box or a book, which makes the memories so much more real than anything else. It’s as if somehow touching the picture is like reaching into the past and we can almost feel as if we are physically transported to that time and place. When I graduated from high school my mom made a book of pictures and achievements and I suppose it was a lot like that book my daughter has with just a few more years of life to it.
The Photo book
I can remember as a child my parents bought a video camera and every Christmas we would sit with my whole extended family and watch the videos of the years before. The thing was, those videos didn’t speak at all to the people who weren’t there, they are somehow more intimate because of the detail and yet more limiting too. It was fun to watch them as a family and share the stories of all that you can’t see in the video, but it’s also like there was too much there and it took away some our ability to share what was behind the images on the screen. When you share a photograph it invites people in in a different way and the story becomes yours to tell in all the richness of the memories it invokes.
When I left the first church I served the youth made me a collage picture book and even though it has been more than six years, when I looked at the book the other day while moving some things around a shelf it was like it was just yesterday. When I walk through the halls at my parent’s house they are still filled with pictures of my brother and I as kids and while a part of me says that there is a time to take them down and move on, they remain a tangible reminder of some special times that otherwise might be forgotten. It would be nice if we could recapture the joy that is so evident in those adorable early childhood photos. Perhaps that is their greatest gift to us in reminding of us how much joy is possible when we refuse to allow it to be diminished by the pressures of life.
With every new experience our photo book grows and so does our chance to remember the things worth taking photos of.
Addendum- After I originally posted this I went for a run (in the falling snow which was beautiful despite the cold) and I was knocked right back into my nostalgia, because as I rounded a corner I was confronted by an old Ford truck painted fluorescent yellow. When I was in high school one of my closest friends, Aidan Kennedy (the “laughing loser” featured in the movie “10 things I hate about you) had a great big old Ford truck painted that same shade of yellow. It’s amazing how that one image called to mind all the adventures we had in that old truck. I don’t have any pictures of the the truck, but seeing one reminded me of drive in movies, late night adventures and a dislocated shoulder, plus lots of other things. I was struck by how powerful the flood of memories was from that one image, but I guess that was kind of my point anyway. It’s true what they say, “a picture (or a fluorescent yellow truck) is worth a thousand words.”
Tripping the Light Fantastic 