Out of the Ether

          My mother always kept our loose photographs in a Whitman’s Sampler box. We usually had an empty one available each year, either from Christmas or Valentine’s day. It was a good choice, sturdy with a hinged lid, and with the added bonus of the aroma of past chocolates. 

          I don’t remember anyone ever sitting down to put all those pictures in albums and many of the photographs are now long gone. Hard to say whether or not this is a cause for regret, since now we have shelf after shelf dedicated to the photographic records of my husband’s parents and grandparents. Like every other family, we have too many album pages where we strain to remember who those faces belong to.

          Our own album assembling stopped with my daughter’s wedding twenty years ago. Now, like so many others, our past has joined the future, stored on our computers and flash drives. While this is less cluttering than shelves of photo albums, it’s a lot less satisfying. When the family comes for a visit, they don’t gather around the computer the way they used to plop down on the couch, ready to make fun of old hair styles. 

          I need more solid memories, so after my first year of blogging I realized that my words felt no more preserved than if I’d written them on a balloon and launched them into the air. Thus, the project I take on every January. 

          Being a Virgo, of course all my blog entries are stored in alphabetical order on my computer with corresponding photo files, just asking to be organized one more time into physical form. Fortunately, fifty per cent sales at sites like Snapfish or Shutterfly are as certain as death and taxes. 

 Now I can save my increasingly rare insights on life and
 too-elusive memories, while leaving behind something tangible of myself.