The Box

We’ve been going through a box of pictures.  This is the box of pictures, as in the only box we’ve accumulated through the years.  It seems our photo albums (all two or three of them) have been put into storage, and so going through the box with the help of my daughter, I’ve been putting together another album.

The thing that struck me the most while looking at these pictures is how young my kids were not so very long ago.  They were really, really, little at one time.  They were also happy.  I was blessed to look at these old pictures and see my children’s happy faces smiling back at me.  “Those were the good old days,” I thought.  Am I really old enough to have “good old days?”  I guess I am.

I thought about ten years in the future and what about today I will remember then, and what, perhaps, will be recalled only through the aid of photographs.  Will I remember our pressing trials?  Probably only vaguely.  Will I remember the strain of paying surprise bills, or of my frustration at throwing out a burnt dinner that was abandoned in the oven while I visited some other world?  I doubt it.  I will probably remember, though, the special sound of the smoke alarm (I’ll tell you the popcorn story sometime).  What I will remember is not the difficulty of paying for Christmas, but that there was Christmas…and Thanksgiving, and Easter, and all those glorious time-markers we value so highly.  I will remember the frustration of having teenagers but, rather than looking back with annoyance, I will remember the things kids do with humor.  After all, many times I have promised myself, “I’ll laugh about this one day.” I will not remember most of what I possessed, but I will remember the people I knew. 

Life creates many memories, most of which are worth keeping. Unfortunately, as my mind weakens with age and new things crowd out the old, I will lose some of those treasures.  But then, that’s what pictures are for and I had better take more of them because when I am an eccentric old woman I want to have a reminder of my “good old days.”