Reflections for 1/11/11

"There is still a third possibility which is perhaps the happiest of them all, and that is that once I have put away my album for good, you may in the privacy of the heart take out the album of your own life and search it for the people and places you have loved and learned from yourself, and for those moments in the past-many of them half forgotten-through which you glimpsed, however dimly and fleetingly, the sacredness of you own journey."(F. Buechner "Listening to Your Life" p.10)

Last summer my son and I went to see the band Nickelback. They have a song called "Photograph" with the following refrain: "Every memory of looking out the back door I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor It's hard to say it, time to say it Goodbye, goodbye. Every memory of walking out the front door I found the photo of the friend that I was looking for It's hard to say it, time to say it Goodbye, goodbye."

During this song they kept showing random photographs on the big screen. I like looking at old picture albums. There are albums that may be floating around my parents house that have the mandatory naked baby bathtub pictures that my mom would threaten to show to my girlfriends.  It is fun to see the different hair and clothing styles.  Of course some of them are quite embarrassing.
 
I have a lot of photos from the early days of my marriage and early years of my kids life as well. Someday I should put them into an album of some kind before they wind up sticking together.  And now of course everything is digital and on the computer. If I were smart I'd back those pictures onto a disc.
 
Photographs are important because they capture moments that will not come back, they help us to remember and remind us that we do exist.  They also can remind us of people who were once important to us and who may not be alive anymore, or whose names now escape us.
 
I don't have pictures of every person who has played a role in the development of who I am. I wish I did.  I don't have a picture of every place I've ever seen, again I wish I did.  But even without a literal photograph, I am surprised how much of the Kodachrome in my head still is quite clear.
 
Blessings,
Ed