Pictures

Today I went through all of our old pictures from various boxes, bags, and drawers stored throughout the house. My goal was to weed out the double-prints, stupid pictures, blurry pictures, etc. and put the rest of them in albums so that they would not get lost or destroyed. I cannot believe how long it took.

I have a lot of pictures from when I was married to my daughter’s dad that I did not know what to do with. They represent a part of my life, of their lives, and I didn’t want to get rid of them, and yet at the same time felt funny putting them in our albums. I ended up putting them in a ziplock back to be transferred to a picture box with all of the duplicates that I didn’t put in the albums. What would you have done with them? I thought it would be hard for my husband to see them – to have to look at them mixed in with all of our pictures. But more than that, I guess I just don’t want to be reminded of that life every time I pulled out the pictures. Is that bad?

My husband told me to keep them so that the girls’ could have them and do what they want with them – put them in their rooms or in albums – since they are a large part of their lives. I think that was a good idea. So for now they are in storage just waiting for the girls to decide what they want to do with them.

It is always so nostalgic looking at pictures from long ago. Many of them 10-14 years old – from when my daughters were born and in their very early years – you know…the times when we took LOTS of pictures very regularly. I noticed some huge gaps – years at a time when I didn’t take (or maybe didn’t save) any pictures and it makes me sad. I hope that I learn from this and stop slacking off…but I know that we will get busy and forget the camera when we are busy.

I am going to try to set a goal to take pictures once a week. I don’t want to miss documenting any more of my children’s lives – not when I have days like today where looking at how they have grown and changed is so rewarding.