Memories

Memories may be beautiful and yet what’s too painful to remember we choose to forget. Oh it’s the laughter,…Sing it Barbra… Streisand that is….

Lately I have been using my husband’s computer because my computer has shut down and every time I turn on his computer I am staggered by the random picture that comes up. My husband has all of the photos we have taken over the years streaming on his computer and I love turning on his computer to see what image comes up first. Sometimes I find myself caught up in the photos that I forget what I turned the computer on to do. Taking a walk down memory lane – people, places and things I had forgotten until their photo appears. Jugging my memory. Taking me back to a time long ago or just the day before. So lovely are photos. So treasured are our memories.

When I see my children in their photos of days gone by, I am amazed at how much they have grown and changed over the years. And more than that I am amazed at how quickly those years have flown by. The experiences we have shared together from different places around the world seeming to have only happened yesterday until I see how little my children are in certain photos. Nostalgia feels my heart as I think about how now my son’s voice has deepened. How he is taller than I am. Such that when I see his little face in some of the photos, my eyes fill with tears with the realization of just how much we have to live our lives. To be in the moment and to appreciate every single moment we have because those pictures have truly spoken to me in a thousand words as the old cliché says.

I see my daughter with her full, fat cheeks when she was a little one now growing up into a young lady. I see how all those years I obsessed over being fat were clearly a waste of energy because compared to now I was thin back then – but never appreciated how I looked and still look. Forcing me to wonder why I was so obsessed with my weight and continue to be obsessed with it.

Coming to the realization that it is true - we are never satisfied with the way we look until we look back and see we were actually good then. Reminding me to appreciate who I am at the present moment and not try too hard to be what I am not.

Photos capture moments past but remind me to be present and to enjoy the life I am living because the years are passing by too quickly to obsess about things I cannot control. To worry about what was and what hasn't even happened yet. To enjoy every single day because those photos reminded me just how quickly time is marching on. Blink and the son I had yesterday is now 14 years old. The daughter I had yesterday is now 10 years old. The girl who lost her mother when she was 13 is now 50 years old. The couple who fell in love have now been married for nearly 22 years. Wow - so much water under the bridge. So many memories, beautiful, painful, inspiring, deflating, magical, imagined. Memories nonetheless. Treasures of time. Memories.