Snaps

Whilst digging through boxes of pictures looking for something else, we found a book of old photographs from 1976-1977.

JC is watching me.

At the time, I took a quick glance and set the book aside. Last night, I took a second look, then a third. Not just peering at the subjects in the photos, but the backgrounds, too. My childhood home. The neighborhood. My grandmother's place, her lake, my brother with the tiny fish he caught. Each photo a snapshot of a place and time long extinct.

The idea dawned on me that my parents, in the photos, were younger than I am now.  My self at that moment, as a senior in high school, had no idea what was ahead. No inkling of a husband or a son or career. Or anything that was to come.

My parents at the park.

Little things. The big maple trees that used to arc over the street in glory, almost all cut down now. The hallway in the background of two photos that clearly shows my mom's handiwork. (I still remember coming home from school and seeing green sponge prints on the wall, an idea she got from one of her magazines.) Me dressed as Groucho Marx for Halloween. My much-younger siblings, long-haired brothers and bell-bottomed sisters.

All captured in fading snapshots.

How bittersweet that such technology exists.

Mom, Kelly and "The Wall"