Originally published in the Herald-Zeitung, July 20-21, 2024
My wife Sandy recently decided to tackle two full shelves of boxes containing photos collected over 4 decades. Her goal: to sort them into thematic stacks, then choose from among the roughly 900 photos and gather 200 of them into photo albums with plastic sleeves. We had never taken home movies, so only the photos hold images of our histories.
She commandeered both the kitchen and living room tables for 8 days and worked diligently for hours each day—a lady with a fervent mission: to excavate our pasts, including uncovering photos of herself as a young girl of 5, holding hands with her mother. I had never seen them, as well as many others from her history that antedated our meeting at Kent State University in 1966.
As I passed her working on this huge project, I would pause from my own business, pulled, it seemed, into the vortex of labeled piles of photos. I lingered and began surveying them. A sense of wonder came over me at the array of scattered photos covering both tables and decades of our lives.
I fingered the photos now congregating in stacks with labels like “Motorcycles” (I had owned 8 over 55 years of riding); “Italy” (we lived in Rome for 2 years when I taught for a Texas university); “California” (10 years living and teaching in Santa Barbara); “vacation trips” in many states. “Conferences” in Italy, Ireland and 4 trips to Greece; “Our sons” (now 53 and 45); “grandchildren,” to name several.
And you know what happens: each photo has one or more stories sticking to it. Some are more vivid and involved than others. My wife patiently paused often in her mission as we asked questions like where the photo was taken, what year; or “remember that seafood restaurant in Maine we enjoyed so much? What was the couple’s names we met there for a meal?”
And suddenly the present moment was swallowed by the looming remembered past. We laughed about incidents that surrounded some photos like haloes, even auras, of adventure: a moment of risking a life change, a major move, a new city, state or country.
So many of the photos became transport carriers that ushered us out of the present time-space continuum into a past moment lived deeply through the image. We felt an acceleration of both imagining and remembering. It was a rush not to be rushed.
A feeling of nostalgia as well as gratitude arose and embraced us, as well as a trembling sadness for a life now vanished. But not quite, for the photos breathed new life into the moment; yes, a sense of loss, but also a sense of found. Something disremembered of our earlier selves was found in those enchanted moments of recollection.
So often she or I would say: “I’d completely forgotten we visited that place,” or “What was the name of that lake where we rented a motorboat and cruised on for a day?” And on--into new depths of recollection.
Yes, she recently finished her arduous and loving task.
I have, however, not yet gone to the 2 albums holding her selections in the amber of plastic jackets. Perhaps this next weekend we’ll take another transit through time and linger once more over more stories that will certainly emerge from the deep past. And we will revisit once again many more moments that have so profoundly defined our identities.