Smile: how many times have you heard the word before someone snapped a shutter in your lifetime? And where are the results of that moment? I’m talking about photos taken on film, processed and printed on glossy paper way back when. The “when” being before digital photography tripped a shutter. If those memories have been placed neatly in an album, with the “who, when, and where” noted, where’s that album now? In a closet? In the attic, garage, or under the bed? For many of us, those old prints in twenty-nine sizes are resting in boxes of all shapes and proportions, and… “They’re around here someplace.” These are photos that we’ve promised to put in an album. And identify. Many of these came to us by way of a close relative’s passing and are so old they’re yellowing, many have corners bent, and some have a crack, where a crack shouldn’t be. When that rainy day arrives, the day you are going to do what should have been done years ago, you open the first box of many boxes and lovingly lift out a fist full of faces and places. Then the introspective meditation takes hold as you try to remember the when was that, where was that, who is that questions wracking havoc in your brain. As you toss some of the mysterious aside, you find one that goes right to your heart … like an arrow …. and you remember every detail, every second, every moment before and after the photo was taken. And you drift off, travel down memory lane and minutes, not moments, later you go on to the next shot. As the day goes on … the first box empties … and the piles of prints become more numerous … and you realize that it has stopped raining. And you carefully put the piles back in the box. Not all the piles. There’s one that no human standing could possibly identify and that goes into the trash. There’s one pile you want to share with a loved one or a neighbor or anyone you can get to sit still, listen, and look back in time with you. “See this one. That was taken in June of fifty-two. June nineteen. We were going to a wedding in Nebraska. My cousin Mabel was getting married on the twenty-second. Well, we had a blow out in … let me think … it was in Council Bluffs. Yes, Council Bluffs, and the wedding was in Omaha. The guy on the right, standing next to me … yes, that’s me. I was really thin then. The guy was a guy I was going with at the time. Oh, I loved that guy … Harry Goldmann … Goldmann with two N’s …but it wasn’t meant to be. Let me tell you what happened to him ….” Yes, most of the time, the boxes of old photos are put away again, waiting for the next rainy day, the next moment of resolve. Possibly, waiting for another generation to open those boxes and say, “Who’s this? What do you suppose was happening here?”
