I don’t know if it’s all mamas or if it just happens to be me, but whichever it is, I do know that I regularly have issues with my cell phone’s storage because of the number of pictures I take and then store in my phone’s photo app. While it is supposed to sync with my computer, both have shown a bit of lag time and I attribute some of that, maybe more, to the storage issues and the number of pictures I have. When we’re on vacation, when we take a simple family adventure, when we head out to explore local places, like art museums and the local nature center, I tend to take way more pictures than I will end up keeping. But, as with many things in my life, I like to keep my options open.
Because of this, many photos sit unviewed in my phone or my photo app, but, like the process of physically decluttering spaces in my home, when it comes time to delete a picture, actually put it in the app’s trash, I find it a challenging task. Perhaps this is because I have, in the past, lost some family photos when a previous laptop suddenly died, taking my photos with it.
Knowing this about myself, this photo hoarding tendency, I am trying to offload and even organize the photos I take. To be honest, it is a wee bit overwhelming at times because as you likely know most digital photos are assigned random names all beginning with the same letters and a string of numbers because another thing I am not so good at is titling any of the pictures I take. As you can probably imagine, this is a tedious process and definitely not nearly as much fun as admiring the photos themselves. Still, it is something I know I need to do.
But it’s also something I want to do.
As a storyteller, I believe that photos tell as much of a story as my words do. In fact, I love that they capture a single moment of our story when that shutter clicks and that moment becomes a memory. It becomes a story to be shared and recalled. A story remembered with joy. This is probably the real reason offloading and organizing my photos takes me longer than I think it will. As I browse through the plethora of pictures I’ve taken over the years, especially of our girls, I get lost in the stories they bring to mind. I am immediately transported back to moments in time, remembering the details around those moments and my organizing slows immensely.
I don’t know if you’ve heard the news that MTV is going off the air at the end of this year, and I don’t know if that matters to you or not. Honestly, I haven’t watched MTV in a l-o-n-g time myself. However, I was a teenager when the music video channel first launched back in 1981 and I remember anticipating many a music video from the likes of Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, Phil Collins, and Madonna. My music taste was always eclectic, and I was a big fan of Madonna’s music videos on MTV, including Vogue, and the opening words echo around my mind whenever I’m taking a picture of the people in my life—strike a pose (I’m pretty sure that song was an influence for a Madonna-inspired costume when hanging out with two of my best friends when I was in graduate school in their hometown of Salem, Massachusetts).
Last night, while working on this process, I came across a picture of our girls when they were still in their single-digit era. Those two could—and still can—strike a pose. Their pose, their energy, their smiles, reminded me of a more recent photo I snapped of the two of them and I realized that despite how much they’ve changed, they have also remained the same in some ways. Their smiles still radiate joy and bring a light to their eyes. But even more, it was their poses that struck me as incredibly familiar through these many years. In my oldest, she has one hand with just a hint of sass and flair, pointing just slightly away from her body and on leg slightly out to the side, toe with a hint of a point to it. In my youngest, she has a hint of impishness in her smile and her eyes and she almost always still brings a hand under her chin or some other model-like gesture, striking a familiar pose that I’ve tracked through the years.
I love the stories these pictures tell. I love that I have a ridiculous number of photos of these two remarkable young women. I love that I can sit and get lost in the memories those photos have captured and that those pictures remind me of the best parts of my girls and of our shared moments. Of this shared life in all of its wonder and delight and struggle and mess. Because, as I keep telling my teenagers, life, like people, is messy and complicated, and it’s also not all one thing or some other thing.
I see them right now facing challenges and questioning life’s difficulties and I remind them often that they are not alone and that they will find their way. We all do. And I will be the whisper of encouragement they hear. I will be the voice of truth that overrides the lies and the anxiety. Every one of the pictures I have of them tells a remarkable story, and that story is only really getting into the best parts.