Photographic Memory Aug. 2009

This summer we celebrated our 16th anniversary. As part of our celebration, I learned how to use the movie maker function on my computer and put together a video retrospective of our life together. Nothing complicated at all for the millions of computer literate people who can make their electronic devices do back flips while mine stares at me and laughs.

Most of our lives are recorded in actual old style photo albums—so turning them to video involves a process of scanning and editing that—once I figured it out proved to be quite enjoyable. It was a stroll down memory lane that made me laugh out loud, cry for people gone from our lives now, and stop in my tracks at photos of events I’d completely forgotten. I was amazed at how much I DIDN’T remember! How can that be?

When I look back, I find it interesting I can remember each moment of some of our crazier days. But not a single second of some of the days I thought at the time would be monumental. I remember hardly anything about closing on our first house, but I remember in living color the day in the back yard at that house when we watched a woodchuck emerge from hibernating all winter about 10 feet in front of us.

I can remember some of the exact gymnastic maneuvers our two kitten siblings performed on our kitchen floor. I can remember the first time we learned our adopted dog Bob was afraid of thunderstorms and nearly came through our back door without opening it.

I think it’s the funny, spontaneous moments that never land in a scrap book or photo album that you never forget…and the others you need pictures to remember.

For my parents, one of their most famous hilarious stories is as vivid as a video in all of our minds, but not a picture exists to attest to the truth of it. It goes like this: Dad spilled a can of stain on himself and their brand new porch. He quickly stripped out of the stain covered pants … but when he went to go in the house he discovered mom had locked the doors when she left for the store. So, he had to run to another door without pants! Inside he threw on the first thing he found on the floor and hurried back to the porch to clean the stain off the floor, but when he bent over, the pants he threw on split wide open front to back. In the next few moments my mother burst onto the porch announcing their friends had come to see the new room! We can hardly breathe as dad re-tells how he had to keep standing with his back to the wall behind furniture to chat in his air conditioned shorts.

I could never stop taking pictures, but my little summer project reminded me that some of the best pictures only live in our memories.