I Have Pictures!

I used to be young.
It was a long time ago so I don't really remember a lot of the details but,
I have pictures.
Paper frames of the people I have shared life with in the places we shared it. Moments in time frozen and accessible for reliving, though in the reliving the details may become askewed.
I used to have them in albums and knew from the album cover where to look for a particular child or event. The cumbersome albums became architecture in my house, lined up on a shelf like a heavy horizontal beam jutting unnecessarily through the space, wholly unacceptable.
It was a surprise when I saw the contents of those bulky, dated, even somewhat hideously embellished albums reduced to envelopes. Those envelopes, dated as closely as I could recall all the many years later, fit nicely in an old rectangular wooden suitcase.
In just one suitcase containing date estimated envelopes of photographs, our lives were summed up.
Since that time an endless collection of photos have outgrown that space spilling into new envelopes and envelope containers, and for years now have been digitally stored in folders on my computer and on back up disks. This is a far far friendlier solution for burdened decor, with the bonus benefit of easier dusting.
Those early photographs went from a thick beam awkwardly juxtaposing itself in our room, to a suitcase that could be easily concealed in and retrieved from a closet.
A whole record of living, carried in one hand.
When I was young I thought I would always remember, never forget those times and the sweet early language of tiny boys and girl conversation, that the way they looked and sounded were indelibly etched in my sharp, carbon capable mind. These people, these things, these moments and events were too precious to ever forget.
Sadly, I was wrong.
Forget I have.
But, I have pictures.
Some of the frozen recollections are from a much earlier time, when it was not the baby faces I positioned myself behind a camera to capture, but mine the baby face being captured.
They are the still shots kept in the files way in the dark dusty back of my memory's archives. They are fewer faded colorless, but treasures nonetheless. Kept there in the back, not because they are less valuable than those filed nearer the front but because they are filed sequentially, and there are many files. As with all antiquity, though there may be a more substantial layer of dust in the cracks, even the dust adds to the value.
The value of the pictures was established, even as they established the beginning.
All of that, what is visually recorded in those photos, either to memory or tangibly, had to be, before any of this could be. This now is because of all those then's. Those way back in the back less often viewed, more seldom retrieved pictures, are the cornerstone of us. Their value is that they are the evidence of the foundation, strength and position of them in the lives they silently testify to.
They are not silent to me though, I can hear them. When I look at them not only my eyes remember, sounds and smells and even feels re-awaken.
I have a picture of me sitting on Grandma's lap in the webbed lounge chair right in front of her rural home. It is alive with the loud buzz and clacks of field insects, and I can feel the fluffy tuft of un-pictured horse tails growing along side the railroad tie edged driveway of tar tabs. I can smell the tar, and the green. It is a powerful 3 & 1/2 inch paper square of various shades of black and white lines shapes and shadows, proving that I was, Grandma was, there, way back then, when I was young.
Every one of my old wooden suitcase-full of photographs is as deeply meaningful, sensory alive, foundationally relevant and memory evoking as that one.
To go through them each, one by one, reliving the moments, well, it would take a lifetime.
A lifetime really can, almost, be retro-fitted into just a few small seemingly insignificant containers. But only by special invitation will the viewers of those container's contents, be lavished with the secrets and hidden treasures, of the whole unseen story actually contained therein.
I have pictures.
All totaled up they would be somewhere in the area of a hundred years worth. Most of my pictures are only 50 something, 4 to be exact, and newer.
I love who they attest to, the life they witness of, the events they prove.
Looking at them is an indulgence into personal lives.
Not so much unlike a juicy tabloid's version of front page full color photo-shopped sleazy journalism with trumped up stories meant to seduce and pacify tongue wagger's.
These stories though, are real, and way better than the fiction of even the craftiest imagination. We, my people and I, are the real insiders of the stories, we know what even the pictures right there before one's very eyes cannot possibly reveal.
I know the stories those pictures can't tell.
I know that while the stories those pictures can tell, are rich and colorful and a delight to my eyes, I know also that it's all the stories the pictures keep secret that delights my soul.
I know, and have proof that life is precious and the most beautiful of gifts.
I have pictures.
I used to be young, and there was so much I did not know.
Now I am not young. I'm not yet old either, but I do know a lot more.
I know I would need to live to the age of 108 to be only 1/2 way through my life right now. Realistically, I am as much as decades past 1/2 way.
I know that now was not as far away as I thought it was then.
I know.
I have pictures.
Taking more pictures, enjoying my camera, recording for future reference the proof of life's beauty, capturing an entire story in a single still moment, has become a favorite activity. And I have envelopes and cases and folders and disks full of our stories. And, there are at least as many more tucked safely in the files of my heart and memory, that can't be proven with a photo for anyone else to see. They belong to only me. I'm the only one who gets to see them.
As 54 July's provable by photographs bear witness to the fact that I am no longer young, they can also bear witness to this:
with a winning hand, having put all my cards on the table, all in, I hit the jackpot. I took my winnings in exchange for my youth so I could live a life that I now know because of the living, is indescribably invaluable.
My winnings are received in regular installments.
Way back then, when I was young, my Grandma's lap was just the right size for me.
Now I am the Grandma.
Funny isn't it how Grandma laps are always just the right size.
They really are.
I know.
I have pictures!

That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith...handed down from your grandmother...2Timothy 1:5 (The Message)
P.J.