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Ring
In
The New Year
Haul
Out
The
Home
Movies...
I am notorious for writing my Christmas cards in
January. I cannot help it. The holiday season sprints to the finish and
I am out of breath. For once the after-Christmas-fire-sales smolder,
the errant bows and wadded up tissue paper are wrestled out from under
the sofa...
...I long to catch up with old friends and far away family.
But then comes the moment, when I open the address
book and find I must cross off another name, change an address, add a
newborn, delete a marriage, change Miss to Mrs., and erase, replace,
and hit enter.
The times are always a changin' and the year is
soon to be new, so I find comfort in old family albums where lives and
loves and losses, new and old faces, huddle closely together. Here, the
once upon a time of ancestors, parents, friends, children and even
beloved pets, remain embedded in sepia, black and white, and
technicolor, just as I remember them.
May you, on this New Year's Eve, find yourself with
your family album pressed open on your lap or with home movies running
in your head, life both still and in perpetual motion, from way back then to here right now.
Family Portrait
Our family portrait is a running slideshow
of memories, current images are clear and sharp, while others reveal red
eyes, vintage clothing and dated hair styles. Corners bent and dog
eared, a few are the treasured, the favorites, the ones we linger over
to freeze frame in time.
Details, where and when and who.
Names and dates,
The flash of a camera. Wedding
cake, the first house, Dad awkwardly holding a newborn, first steps,
birthday parties, swimming lessons, first day of school, graduations,
new driver standing by old car, old drivers standing by new cars,
weddings, reunions, funerals, gatherings, firecrackers, car trips,
summer cabins, tiny fish on big poles, young faces with big grins, old
faces with warm smiles.
The album is just that, a memory vault.
When we think we have forgotten who we are,
what our family means, we can run the slideshow...and the pictures
become what is the very best part of being a family...
...memories...
...yours, mine, ours...
...a singular tale of love over time...
©gvw
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