My daughter recently graduated from high school, and in preparation for a party in her honor she and I pulled out stacks of old photo albums and sifted through the pictures, gathering our favorites to create memory collages on pieces of trifold foam board.
We spent a few hours working on the project. In addition to the numerous albums, there were two big boxes of photos from various times in our lives, haphazardly thrown together.
As we browsed the images a myriad of thoughts drifted through my mind.
My goodness, I can see how I have aged.
Wow, I had forgotten that day.
I can’t believe how fast she has grown.
Tempus fugit—time flies.
A myriad of emotions also swept through me. It doesn’t take much for me to get sappy, and encountering so many photos of her from when she was a small child moistened my eyes with tears. The images also reminded me of exactly why photography is such a miraculous invention and one of the reasons I love it so much.
How many things would we forget without photographs to remind us?
How many memories remain sharp because we have the photograph to hold in our hand and remember?
I always say that if my house were to catch fire the antique oval portraits of my Finnish great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, which hang over the piano in my dining room, would be some of the first objects I would save. These family heirlooms are priceless to me.
The photographs of my children would also be at the top of my list.
My house is small, but there are framed photographs everywhere—crowding table tops, staggered up the stairwell, stuck to the refrigerator. There are photographs of my ancestors, photographs of my family, photographs of my pets.
As a portrait artist I sometimes forget the significance of the job. I forget that every click of the shutter can potentially become someone’s future heirloom, someone’s treasured keepsake. I forget how precious a photograph can become—whether images of loved ones who’ve passed away, or images of a wedding day, or images of a newborn. These are so much more than a glossy sheet of paper. These are pieces of our hearts, pieces of our lives, pieces of time, frozen forever.
As a parent it’s never easy to let your baby birds leave the nest. I am nowhere ready for it, quite honestly. But step by step they gain their independence and step by step they find their wings. It’s a tune as old as time itself.
To quote my favorite poet, the late Mary Oliver:
“to live in this world
you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
I, for one, find these to be some of the truest lines ever written, and also some of the most difficult to adhere to.
I have by no means mastered this graceful and difficult lesson involved with being a human. I have never been very good at letting go, and I am the epitome of the worried mother. But life, as they say, is a journey of progress, not perfection.
In the meantime, as seasons change and old chapters come to a close, I will look ahead hoping for the best and hang onto my photographs, treasuring each and every one.
