Friday, December 13, 2019

After the letters, begin the photos

After reading through so many letter and postcards, and deciding most of them were ready to be let go, it was time to start on the photos. Before the advent of digital photographs, well before the birth of smart phones and Instagram, every roll of negatives was printed, and for a period of time often printed in duplicate. That's a lot of paper and ink. That's even more fuzzy images without a delete button. And when you decide that your kids should snap photos of the world from their vantage point, it's a lot of sidewalks and shoes. Fuzzy sidewalks and shoes.

And for some inexplicable reason, I kept them. In boxes, in envelopes, in albums, among letters and cards and mementos. Sometimes I was good, and a trip's worth of photos were culled to a reasonable number and housed -in order- -with notes- in a small 4x6" album. Go me. But let's be real, that was not the norm.

So along with the old boyfriend letters, out went the old boyfriend photos. Along with the kids' toddler doodles went the half-face-grimacing-in-a-swim-diaper photos. I have plenty still in my little box, only now the little box is 1/2 full with only photos that bring a smile and are reasonably discernible.

I'm not done yet. Of course I'm not done yet. There are more boxes of photos to go through. So many more. But it's a good task, and an easier one with Becca asking the ever lingering question "Really?" Because the most, the answer is (after a big sigh) "No, I guess not" and off it goes into the land of memory, ready to fade into merely a hint, a shimmer, of my history.

1 comment:

  1. Great article. A letter is a written message conveyed from one person to another person through a medium. Here I observed the importance of letters before coming to smartphones. It is very impressive. Thanks for giving such a valuable piece of information. Apart from this article, I learned about hammerhead shark which is the largest of all hammerhead species.

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