Snap-Shot Thought

Recently a young woman joined us [ https://www.facebook.com/beckydanzenbaker ] who is a professional photographer, and that got me thinking about photos and what they mean to us. [Please don’t insert the Kodak slogan at this point. I looked it up and I had it wrong all these years. Turns out it isn’t “How the heck do you get this thing into the camera?” This is of course meaningless to those of you who have never loaded a real film camera.]

I suspect that photographs have different meanings depending on who we are. My very young granddaughter comes into our house for a visit every so often. I have observed that as long as she’s there long enough to take off her shoes [Note: This time period must be measured in nanoseconds.] she will always manage to come into the kitchen and look at a photograph we have there of her and her mother. It is in sepia so I suppose you could say that it’s different from other photos in the house. But I believe that it’s because it is the sole photo in the house that only has her and her mother. In this one place she doesn’t have to share her mother with her brother, friends, or even her father.

We literally have thousands of photos from our parents loaded in albums. These photos are from my mother and father’s early years. There on paper is the proof that my parents were teenagers and young folks who cavorted and snuggled. It’s reassuring to see them at a time of their lives when they were unburdened by the cares of the world, or children. Here the photos give me the chance to see a part of history before I was inserted into their lives. They look happy.

Scattered about the house are photos of our family taken at different periods in our lives. Children as babies. Family portraits with all present, but no one has gray hair or an overstuffed waist line. Only adults, and adults with children. Even a few of family pets who have gone on to better places than hiding under the dining room table at Christmas hoping for a dropped piece of turkey

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Each of those, lets us call to mind what happened at the time those photos were taken. A mother holding a just born baby, and the hope and joy of those first few days. Games and parties for the children in our lives and how those events serve as place markers in our lives. Trips taken, both near and far. Blowing Rock, North Carolina and Warsaw, Poland. As I sit here typing, the mouse pad next to me has a photo of two reasonably intelligent people fully clothed, standing in water up to their knees. It only has meaning if you know we were standing in the Aegean Sea at the time.

Memories, emotions, love, laughter, and melancholy. Photos can bring us all of those.