377 days, Blog #164 - Pictures worth a thousand emotions

On Friday, I decided to clean my office at work.  I’ve had to move spaces a couple times and I think the last time I just didn’t want to settle in… just in case.  So instead of filing, papers got put in a drawer.  Or on a shelf.  Plus I go to a lot of meetings.  So there is a lot of paper.  Anyway, I must have got the fever because yesterday I decided to do the same to the room I use at home as an office.  Or did… once upon a time.

I’ve ignored this room pretty much for the last year.  In the winter I like to sit with the computer in front of the fireplace.  Then last summer I found the chair in the living room between the windows has a great cross breeze.  So… the office became a collection space for all sorts of … paper stuff.  And not paper stuff.  I use the closet to stash my holiday supplies.  I hid the chest of dress up clothes for my nieces in here during a party or something.  And then… there’s that box… you know that box of stuff when you move that you don’t know what to do with… but can’t really throw away… yet?   So it just stays somewhere in limbo forever?

Yeah.  So I made some good headway with the paper stuff yesterday.  I cleared off the desk enough to do bills and make a plan for things to accomplish this week.  I came back with my morning coffee this morning… and opened a box of photos.  

I have a lot of photographs.  I got a bunch when my grandmother passed away.  I’ve been slowly scanning them so I can give digital copies to my family… eventually.  Also towards that end, I took THE box of pictures from my parents.  Not to mention albums from theater and Higgins and friends and travels… all of which I have raided over the years to scan for a Facebook post.  Of course, I didn’t put them in the albums again.  They just lived in messy, disorganized shoe boxes.  I spent most of today – time enough to get through half of the first season of Mad Men in the background – going through those shoeboxes.  I didn’t even get to my grandmother’s photos.  But holy cow… that’s a lot of pictures.

I actually threw quite a few out.  Things I printed in duplicate… because that’s what you did before you could post things on Facebook.  If you wanted to share a photo, you needed copies.  Now I scan them and keep just one.  Also, I took a lot of pictures of trees.  I knew where some of those places were… but really… there isn’t any purpose to it if there is no one in it by which to trigger a memory of why I thought that view was important enough to use film to capture.  And then there were the overexposures and blurry photos that just didn’t make sense.  So, I still have a lot of pictures.  But I have less than when I started.

A lot of pictures.

When I first started going through those pictures from my grandmother’s house, I found an envelope labeled Teresa Conroy – or maybe it was Teresa Moreau.  Anyway, she is my grandmother’s mother.  In that envelope were maybe twenty… thirty pictures.  It was the first time I ever saw those pictures.  And I realized they were all my grandmother had left of her mother.  Now, granted there were no smart phones or Polaroids or even a Kodak instamatic when Teresa was young… or even old (there was only ONE picture of her with her husband)… but if I were to pick thirty pictures from today, I couldn’t do it.  Not for myself.  Not for my sister.  Or friends.  Or my parents.  It is interesting to contemplate though, isn’t it?  If one only had thirty moments to capture, what would they be?

I went through many more than thirty moments today.  Photos are a funny touchstone of memory.  Well, not funny entirely.  Although there were a few of those – like this one.

Seeing my parents as young.  The people they were before I came along.  It’s both heartwarming and sad.  Sad to see the youth faded.

And then… my own youth has faded. There were several baby photos - I am the first born.  Pictures representing something that I’m sure is a memory for my father, but not for me because I was far too young to remember.

Some I did remember.

With joy.

With sadness.

With an oh I really want to restore the pool.

And now I’m tired.  Because, it was a hell of an emotional roller coaster.  But a good day’s work.  And one step closer towards decluttering this office.