Kodak Moment

My husband sent me on a mission to find this picture

last night, and while I was looking for it, I was killing myself laughing and then, I was sad. Because there was nothing quite like the thrill of picking up your roll of film from the drugstore, opening that packet right there and flipping through snapshots to find out if they came out as well as you hoped they would.

Not to mention the joy you feel when you find a photo like this
while you dig through the desk looking for last years property tax statement.

Or one like this

tucked into an old book to make you remember the smell of salt on your skin.

It makes me sad that technology will mean that M can just delete pictures like this
or this

to prevent them from being used against her later the way that I fully intend to use these pictures. (That's my sister EyeTest, I mean Kassie rocking the pink sweat-suit)

As I sat in the middle of my living room floor pulling out album after album I found myself remembering the time my twin & I "climbed" a mountain


(she dresses WAY better now) and how crazy and carefree we all were

how a summer day didn't mean being cooped up in an office


it meant getting high in the park.

I suddenly had a nearly overwhelming longing for another baby when I saw just how cute M was

BUT then I remembered she was a freakin' BRAT she was for about the first 13 years



a brat with a FIERCE sense of fashion, though

Just as I was finishing up, resolving to dig out my giant manual winding Canon from the closet I opened one last roll of film.

There was M's 7th birthday party. Twelve little girls and this guy

rocking out in my living room with a karaoke machine, the Josie & The Pussycat's CD and 36 inflatable fish. I smiled as I remembered how completely happy everyone was that day. Not one squabble, the birthday girl radiant with the idea that we would take her to a movie at 10pm that night, that she would get pizza for dinner, that everything she asked for she got. I look at the one picture of myself from that day, six silk flowers in my hair, I'm making a face at the camera, but you can see that I'm happy, that the day could not have been happier, more perfect.

My heart sank though, because I knew what was coming next. I kept flipping though that stack of pictures, marveling at how young you can look, how innocent. I traced my finger over M's smooth forehead and then flipped the picture. There was her birthday cake, only the candles visible in the over-dark photo. I should have looked away, should have stopped there, stuffing the rest of the pictures back into the envelope.

I didn't; instead closing my eyes and laying that photo face down I sucked in my breath as I looked at the next picture, taken just two days later.

M's little face swollen and bloody as she lays hooked to tubes and machines, her blankie tucked beneath her comatose arm.

And I was grateful for the ability to delete pictures you don't want to ever see again.