Get In The Picture

My mom has been putting together her family’s history for the last few years. A long process, she has gone through so many old photo albums, matching up names and faces, and diving back into history to places our departed family members loved. I am fascinated every time I look at one of the albums my mom has put together, documenting someone’s life. I have learned so much about people I only know by name and stories that have faded. My great grandfather loved to garden and every single picture of him is of him in his yard, surrounded by the things he was growing. I love the photos of family members in front of houses they were so proud to own and maintain. Just the stature and expression on a person standing in front of a home can tell the story of hard work and pride. Photos of little siblings looking grumpily at the camera tells the age old tale of kids who don’t want to smile on command. Just flipping back through my mom’s pictures of her as a child bring up stories about the places she lived, the outfits her mother made her, and always lead to stories of her with her siblings. Images of my grandparents – grandpa in his uniform and grandma with perfectly curled hair and a slim smile shows a life so far away and I can imagine who they were then compared to who I knew them to be later in life.

I am almost always the one in our family to take pictures. My kids will have plenty of albums to fill with photos that tell stories from their childhood – where they lived, what they loved, and who they were. There are pictures of bike riding, beach fun, train playing, birthday parties, summers at the cottage. So much of them and so little of us – their mom and dad – who were there too. There isn’t a whole lot of documentation of *our* life between the wedding pictures and now. There’s an album full of pictures of our dogs because we took a lot of pictures of them before we had kids. And then it was the kids. So many pictures of the kids. What about our life being documented too? There is no picture of us proudly standing in front of the homes we so proudly have bought and taken care of. There are very few pictures of us tending gardens. There is the occasional picture of one of us holding the camera in front of us and a child, awkward and telling no story at all.

I don’t spend all of my time thinking what-ifs, but I do think about the fact that if I were to not see tomorrow, I have two young children who may not remember much of me. All they’ll have is photographs to hold onto and the letters I have written them and the stories that those left can tell them. I want them to see me – to know I was there, holding their hands, brushing their hair, reading them books, taking them for walks. I want them to see that when I was with them, I was happy. So happy. That I love them. There is only so much the camera can capture in any given moment. Some gorgeous moments go by undocumented and some mediocre moments get captured and look like they were more beautiful than they were. That’s just how it goes.

I know how important it is to get over myself, hand the camera to someone else and get in the picture from time to time. So I can see, they can see, and we all can remember when. So that someday great great grandchildren can put a face to a name. So that the story of each life can be captured and remembered even in the smallest of moments.