Our school is having a small Veterans Day event tomorrow. We've asked students to bring photos of family and friends who have served. We're hanging them in the breezeway along with their names, branches, and where they served.
So I came home this evening knowing I wanted and needed to do my own searching to honor the many people in my family who fit into this special group. This led to lots of flipping and flipping through the many photo albums that have been collecting dust at the top of my closet. Prior to the digital age of sharing photos, I took LOTS of pictures and neatly organized them all. This would, of course, be prior to having my children as well.
I kept smiling as I rediscovered so many favorite pics that brought back good memories with friends and family. There is one of me with my papa and memaw holding a birthday cake they surprised me with one year. I think I'm 18 or at least too old to be excited about a birthday cake from your grandparents. But I was excited. In another we're playing The Christmas Game. This is a rockin' board game from way back that I would do anything to track down, which was a family tradition for many years with my mom's side.
Of course there is page after page of faces that are so permanent in my life now that I often forget how far we do go back. Cliche but true. Pictures of Amanda and I swimming at a pool in Memphis. I came across so many pics of Rosemond and I hugging, giving cheesy smiles I lost count. One last one I'll mention still seems so real and present to me. It is a picture of Taylor climbing up a sign along the highway. I can feel myself standing there in the tall grass watching him. We're only 17 I think and we're on a road trip over spring break. What the picture doesn't show is a large (I mean large) statue of a bull and Ang and Bob contemplating how to climb it.
I'm so much about trying to enjoy the present, be mindful in the moment, that I may forget to relish the past. I think it is important. Especially with those people for whom our memories have been sealed.
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