by Julie Carter
A Pandora’s box of memories sits on a closet shelf
with a label that simply says “Old Photos.”
A tattered lid is anchored tenuously with a yellowed strip of adhesive from
a long-ago era and the dust is layered in decades.
If you are like me, that is just one of many boxes
that hold pieces of your life in glossy rectangles with dates stamped in the
margins and maybe a name or place written across the back. Handed down from
generation to generation, the boxes may be relatively small but the value is
untold.
As each photo is pulled from the mass of others, a
memory is released. It floats up before your eyes and brings with it names,
circumstances and perhaps even sounds and smells of that moment suspended in
time by a camera.
I’ve looked at these pictures so many times over the
years and yet as life goes by, each one seems to have a little more meaning, a
little more depth for a life that once was. I find not just memories, but
emotions as well, are held in place by a piece of film paper.
Each secures a season, a location and its own story.
It captures genealogies and work histories. It validates memories of fashion
both in clothing and home decorating. It takes you to a time when people lived
simpler and times seemed harder but smiles were bigger. Oh, and those love-filled
kitchens along with the smells of cooking food in pots and something always
baking in the oven.
In the “Old Photo” boxes are all those Christmases
past, starting with the tall spruce tree selected after a tromp up a snowy
hill. Dad with a two-bit axe in hand and Mom making sure it was the tree to fit
the bay window area. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and neighbors all
joining in the fun. Laughter and children’s squeals of joy echoing in the crisp
air of December.
Snowballs flying and kids rolling in the drifts. Then
the trek back to the pickup with the Christmas tree of the year, dragging
through the snow perhaps with a child hitching a ride. Times that we as
children thought would last forever.
The strings of bright lights, garlands of popcorn and
cranberries placed carefully on the branches once inside the house. Those treasured special ornaments carefully
unwrapped and hung high on the tree out of harm’s way. Soon, the packages under the tree evoked
unparalleled excitement for days before the wrapping-paper holocaust on
Christmas morning.
We remember those things without a photo but with one,
they come to life in a reality our mind, left on its own, tends to tinker with
and adjust. I have always loved photos and that has evolved to me becoming not only
passionate about them, but pursuing photography with that same driven desire.
I don’t see a camera as a tool for a photograph. I see
it as a historian at work. I know without a doubt that what comes as a result
of a camera will have a special place in life not just today, but significantly
more in the future.
So while we remind each other and ourselves to savor
each day because we know tomorrow is not promised, I suggest we photograph each
day for the same reason. Save today for those tomorrows beyond your life.
Someone will be glad you did.
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