Have you ever looked at a picture and been transported right back into that very moment. A moment of fear…those rollercoaster ride shots where your kid is completely terrified while you sit next to them smiling; a moment sadness…the shots you took with your terminally ill dad, on the last “celebration” together, eyes filled with a loss you can not even comprehend yet; or a moment of complete love, joy, and perfection. My friend just sent me this photograph and I can not stop looking at it. It expresses our relationship to a tee…complete mutual adoration.
Friendships are complicated. They can be exciting, heartbreaking, wonderful, and even lonely. Etched into our minds, into our beings. Growing up and growing apart, life getting in the way, milestones that don’t compliment each other, it is amazing that they survive. Nothing can un-etch a memory…not college, boyfriends, or different cities. That bond, years can go buy with out interaction then boom…you reconnect like there was no time lost.
When the coolest girl in middle school, the most beautiful, the most talented, the most of the most…when she decides that you are the person she wants to be friends with, well, that is just everything. When she is also kind, and funny, and beyond the most generous loving person…that is forever. Seeing this image from her wedding day brought back floods of memories, so much goodness. The moment I saw it I knew it was a forever photo. Swoon.
That’s what I call them…forever photos. I see them on social media often. That one image that represents who that person really is, how that family really relates, or a solid connection between friends. They are keepers, the ones that go to the “favorites folder”, the ones used in the wedding video, 60th birthday keepsake book, or the funeral collage.
In the last 12 months I have emptied many attic spaces. While covered in cobwebs, 20 years worth of dirt, and the tar from the last time we roofed the house, I have cried many times…mostly looking at photographs I unearthed. My kids, so young, so ridiculously fun. Still images turning into home movies in my mind. The Three Little Pigs, an after bath routine, creating panic with naked toddlers smelling oh so delicious. The “big bad wolf” searching for “pigs”, from one badly built house (bed) to the next, huffing and puffing…the little quivering “pigs” squealing with delighted terror under the covers as the wolf approached to do their bit and “blow down” the house. Thank goodness for the brick house, the wolf foiled once again, fun that never grew old*. The crazy thing is, even though we did it night after night, I am not sure I would remember it if we did not have the picture to “watch”.
Beautiful moments, captured forever. Forever is good.
*who on earth does this with toddlers, then expects them to go to sleep?
Swooning 