The pictures are of my children, their friends, our family, vacations and happy times. They are of moments I snapped from behind a camera that were so beautiful, they merited a frame.
When I put them into those glass and wooden dedications, I didn’t think things would ever change. I thought those toothless smiles would be forever. Chubby cheeks, sand covered little fingers and cupcake smiles, it was our world in that golden time of sunshine.
Looking at the pictures, I realize I somehow blinked for a few years, and haven’t framed anything new. My golden babies sat in a box all this while. I look at them now and ache for the moments I had the sense to capture.
The new moments, the now, is where I live.
Time has moved forward and teeth have grown in. Feet and fingers are no longer chubby, but are starting to resemble the adult appendages they will become. Cute is fading, and we are entering the age of interesting challenges and tearing away slowly. “Mommy” is turning to “Mom” and the photos are of reluctant poses with embarrassed slightly tolerant smiles. No longer does my lens get the love of big fat easy grins. They no longer run to me and say “Mommy see da piture??”.
I walk around the house clutching my framed babies as they were, and find places of honour for them. If I had known that it isn’t endless, in fact it is breathtakingly fast I might have done things differently. Like a roller coaster ride that suddenly screeches to a halt, you wonder why you closed your eyes on the big hills, because now you realize you could have enjoyed it more. You were safe and it was ok.
I cried over some of those pictures today. Because like the period of life in which they were taken, time has moved on. I know how lucky I am, I know that many people can’t glance up from the picture of their toddlers and look at their happy healthy older children. That doesn’t mean I am not going to take this day and look at pictures of the way we were.
Pictures don’t belong in a shoe box. They cover the walls of our happy home and in a few years I will be missing the people they are today. Time to take some more pictures.
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