Snap By Snap

A more conventional picture might have been a better way to start this blog, but this image says so much about why I love photos. Maybe this is the moment it began.

The thumb is mine. I was nine years old and my mother had died several months before. Life was still a bit of a blur for all of us. I knew she was gone, and I knew she'd been sick for a very long time before that, but the finality of it was hard to grasp. I thought about Mom a lot - she had been so very ill before she died that it had been a long time since I'd been able to really talk with her. That Saturday morning, I suddenly realized that I could no longer see her face in my mind. I couldn't hear her voice. I panicked. I needed to see her face - the loss of that memory would make the loss of her unbearable. The only picture of my mom I knew of was in a double hinged frame - two 5x7 church directory photos of my mom and dad - on the nightstand next to my dad's bed. So, I went to my dad and asked if I could have that picture. Possibly not understanding the depth of my 9 year old desparation, or perhaps lost in his own, he said no.

Not to be deterred, I borrowed the picture I could not have, grabbed my little camera and headed out to the backyard. In the days before scanners and quick trips to the Sam's Club photo desk, the grass and the California sun would have to do.

Years later, when the four of us were grown, my sister divided up the family photos among us and I finally have the photos of my mother that I had yearned for so many years before. Memory is a funny thing. It's fragile, prone to distortion, and imperfect, but we must have it. We surround ourselves with things that help us remember - momentos, hand-me-downs, stickynotes, keepsakes, and treasures. We don't want to forget, to let go. I think this is because we are made for connection. We long for it.

The picture above is a grainy black and white photo that is almost 39 years old. My grandmother's box of memories included tintypes, and my daughter's memory box will no doubt be a digital file folder of some description - but no matter how advanced we become, we'll hold on to our images because, more than anything else, we want to hold on to each other.