Like an echo, like a photograph

I miss pictures.

Ya know? Real pictures. The ones that are printed out on shiny photo paper, that have pin-holes in the corners from being tacked up onto bulletin boards, or tape remnants from being stuck on the wall.

When I was growing up, my father was the Official Family Photographer, and he took his job seriously. In my parents' family room, an entire wall is bookshelves, stocked with hundreds and hundreds of books - history, political analysis, sociology, some literature - and then a couple of shelves dedicated to photo albums.

There are at least twenty of them, maybe more, ranging from pictures that my grandparents had of my parents growing up, baby books, wedding albums, and then chronicling the years as Josh and Sam and I grew up, and some as my parents were empty-nesters.

One of the things my brothers and I do every Thanksgiving is sit down and look through a bunch of the photo albums.

I can't imagine losing them.

I guess it would be worse to not have them at all, ever. When I lived in Atlanta in my 20s, my boyfriend's parents had a beautiful house, full of gorgeous furniture and art and books. And one day when we were there, I said, "I don't see any family pictures. Where are all of your parents' picture albums? I want to see pictures of you as a kid."

"They don't have any albums. They never really took a lot of pictures of us."

I found this baffling - and sad - on so many levels. The visual record that my grandparents and parents have of our family, and that my brothers and I continue to add to, is an essential and cherished element of our shared bond and history.

(Also, what the fuck kind of parents don't take a jillion pictures of their kids??)

That's why I'm so adamant about taking pictures, preserving old ones, and presenting them in a way that's digestible - not just a series of files on a phone or computer, but something that is tangible and somewhat curated. I do this by making photo books, including of old photos that I've scanned. One year I borrowed the cracked, falling-apart baby album that my parents assembled in the year after I was born. I scanned all the photos and printed them in a photo book that recreated the album page by page. The last couple of pages had some completely random photos that had nothing to do with baby me - pictures of them and their friends at a wedding or something like that. I always thought it was funny that those pictures got shoved in with the baby pictures, so I included them in the photo book as well.

I don't want to lose these memories. I nag my mother about getting the old family photos scanned.

But then I neglected my own advice.

So, we have this cat that I got because the kids wanted a pet. His name is Scooby.

The kids adore him.

I like him fine. He's fine. He's a nice cat. Whatever.

I'm generally indifferent to cats, and that feeling hasn't changed. If someone came along and said, "hey, I really love cats and I want your cat and I'm taking him off your hands if you don't mind," I'd be all, "OK, sure," and I wouldn't ever think of the cat again.

I can't really see this actually happening. It would be super weird.

But assuming it did, and assuming it were a friend or someone who I didn't have reason to suspect was a cat abuser, I'd be cool with it if I didn't know that the kids would freak out.

Anyway.

The cat chills out in my room a lot, frequently under the bed. He is generally unobtrusive. When he comes to hang out with us, he is friendly and cuddly and purr-y. He has some toys that he usually ignores, but sometimes likes to play with.

And then over the weekend, he went kind of nuts.

The kids have this stuffed snake that had fallen on the floor. It had a slight split in the seam, so some of the stuffing was poking out, but it was a small split and easily fixable.

Until Scooby got hold of it and murdered that poor snake.

Zeke told me about it before I saw it, so at first I didn't realize the extend of the destruction.

"Don't worry, honey, I can sew it up."

"No, it can't be fixed. All the stuffy-fluffy is out."

Indeed it was.

R.I.P.

Then later I went into my room. A picture frame that had been on my night table was on the floor, with the glass and the backing separated from the frame.

Next to it was a photo that had been ripped to shreds.

It took me a second to realize that the photo was one of Emma and me.

It's one of my favorite pictures of the two of us. We're at a beach house on the Outer Banks, I'm sitting in a chair with my feet resting on a ledge, and she's sitting on my lap. She's two or three, wearing shorts, hair in pigtails, rocking an impossibly gorgeous tan. She's telling me something and I have my head cocked to the side as I look at her and listen to her story and smile and marvel at how adorable she is.

And that picture in the frame was the only copy I had. My heart sank. Even though I have so many pictures of Emma, that one was special, and the idea that it was gone, never to be recovered, gutted me.

But it's just a picture, right?

No. It's not just a picture. It's family history. It's irreplaceable.

This is why when people are asked what they would save from a burning house, it's almost always family photographs.

Had I scanned the picture? Maybe I had scanned it.

But I couldn't recall ever scanning it. I looked through my computer, my phone, thumb drives, external storage devices, old discs with pictures on them, anything I could think of. I couldn't find it anywhere.

I was despondent.

Then I remembered. I wrote about it a year ago. And in doing so, had to have scanned a copy to upload it to the blog post.

I still haven't found the file from when I scanned it last year. But I was able to download it from the blog post.  Here it is.

Phew.

So, scan your old pictures. Or write a blog and include pictures on it.

Also, anyone want a cat?