“When you take a photograph, things stay still. The way that they were, is the way that they are, is the way that they will always be.” ― Victoria Schwab

Everyone my age seems to have piles of photos all piled away. Notebooks, albums and event keepsakes. We had plastic totes crammed under the beds and stacked in the closet. What about you? Most were filled with photos documenting 30 years of marriage and family. Somehow, I also inherited photos from my childhood. The outfits my mother dressed us up in during the early 70’s seem criminal today. The Bee Gee’s hadn’t even been invented yet??

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

Photograph, lyrics by Nickelback

Back in the 80’s, there was a new business venture at college – photographers (mostly students) would show up at all the events and flash, flash, flash. Photos with names, dates and event titles were up on the wall of the walk-in store and available to print. The turnaround was almost immediate – memories ready to catalogue. Remember, everyone wasn’t “walking” their phones back then. We were dependent on someone else, a professional, to document our fun. It was only the beginning…

As I dig around through all these photos under the bed, clearing out, getting ready to move to somewhere much smaller, I’m time traveling. Mostly I’m thinking about all these people that were (many still are) in my life. At this age and circumstance, the reflective mechanism fires up like an automatic pilot. It comes with the new territory of stiffening joints and sleepless nights.

We were all constructs in way or another. Put together by so many people along the way. Still true, even now. These photos that I’m shuffling and sorting are taking me backwards in so many directions:

• Dressing up like a black cat for Halloween in a costume my grandmother made – with a long tail I could pull around and fit in my mouth.
• Family dinners every holiday and all the changing hairdos.
• Riding the river on a black inner tube with my best friends.
• Making homemade ice cream on those hot summer nights out on the patio at my grandparents’ house.
• Toilet papering the tall trees of a friend’s house late at night and racing to get back in the idling cars before getting caught.
• Camping out, fishing and swimming with my very large extended family every summer at the river while celebrating the week of July 4.
• Living with all those strangers in the dorm – many still in my life 40 years later.
• All my daughter’s childhood themed birthday parties.
• Those wonderful trips to New Mexico my wife and I took almost every year. All the beauty that overwhelmed and inspired us.

“Carrying a photograph of someone in your pocket is like carrying a little bit of their soul.” ― José Saramago

For some reason we have a lot of duplicate photos in this collection?? And, why do we need seven shots of a five-year-old blowing out candles on the same cake?  There are a few very old photos from the 60’s. The pictures are square shaped, from a kodak camera. This was my grandfather’s camera, so he took the photos. He had bifocal lenses in his eyeglasses. It’s easy to tell the pictures he took, the top of everyone’s head is cut off.

These days it’s possible to digitize your collection of photos. Sounds so easy. That’s the first sign of quicksand. Once they all get digitized, someone then has to get that miniature Library of Congress organized. Never going to happen. Appealing to only rare personality types. Sorting the photos on my phone is a dark tunnel with no light at the end. How did I get over 3000 on this little device in the first place? I never take pictures. I hate when people do that. Where did these come from?

My grandchildren have grown up in a digital age. My photos of them are mostly those 3000 on my phone. Under the bed in in the closet they are of the pre-cell phone age. It’s been fun to travel back down these roads and remember the young-looking people orbiting my life. Each in their own way helped turn me into who I am. It’s like looking at the detailed schematics to my life when I trace this history of people and events.

I’m getting much better at pitching my possessions and “death cleaning.” All of my peers are telling me stories about their adult children having no interest whatsoever in receiving any of their parent’s significant possessions. I have discovered this heartbreaking truth in my own experience lately. Imagine my shock as tears were shed when I casually told of throwing away most of the stockpile of photos crowding my next chapter.

You can’t win for losing.

I saw this photo the other day. Notice what’s so striking about it? One common denominator about all the people in my own photos is that each was alive in the moment. Losing that has cost us something.

As I went through those photos the other day, and some more this morning, I thought about places, times and people. I’m sure that I notice so much more now than I did when I was there, “live” in the moment. I feel layers and layers more now, with all that history behind me. Maybe you should save some of those old photographs the next time you clean up. Get ’em out and go sit on the front porch. Looking out the backdoor is usually good for your soul.

“A photograph is a kind of time machine.”  ― Nicola Yoon

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