Albums
“Brrr … It’s freezing outside!”
“We are definitely not going out in that weather.” Lorraine says, “Let’s spend the day putting all those loose pictures into an album. I say, “We only have 24 albums of photos. We definitely need at least three more.”
I am reminded of my patients who were moving to Florida into a one bedroom apartment. They were world travelers. They had cruised the Amazon River. They had toured Mongolia and lived in tents. Their request of me was a strange one. Would I mind taking their 20 photo albums because they had no room for them in a one-bedroom apartment in Boca Raton. I was shocked.
“No thanks,” I said. “But it was kind of you to make the offer.”
As Lorraine and I started slipping the memories of past times into the plastic slots, many remembrances gushed back. We viewed our children growing from babies, to adolescents, to teenagers, to brides and grooms. Actually we saw ourselves changing in appearance from our wedding day in 1962 to the sedate suburban couple in 2010.
Lorraine’s hair was an ever-modifying spectacle. She was in vogue and in fashion in every one of her many hairstyles. She did the straight look, the bouffant, the curly perm approach. She was right in tune with the times.
I, on the other hand, had a moustache way back when the kids were small. I shaved it, one half at a time on a crazy New Year’s Eve many years ago. I had an Afro-style when they were fashionable and a crew cut when I grew tired of all that hair.
It was still freezing outside when we stopped for a while. There were still hundreds of photos to be placed. My surprise 65th birthday party at the Rye-Hilton in Westchester, my unique almost surprise 70th birthday at the Fox Hollow Inn. We also had pictures of my 50th with the Greenes in a limo on the way to Atlantic City.
Recently the memories are of baby pictures and grandchildren doing wonderful things. They are now the focus of all our picture taking. Ooh’s and aah’s when we see the little ones growing up.
Night fell and we both grew tired. It is hard to fill albums with pictures. There is a dual experience, the actual work and the emotional drain.
It was fun and truly rewarding, but we could use a little warming sunshine.
