Digital photos dont't work!

We all have mountains of digital photos that are stashed here and there on our computers and cell phones and on Cd's and in the cloud and god knows where. We just dumped them wherever, and when we changed computers, these photos became ever more distant. (But they were there! Somewhere.) It's supposed to be the modern way and accessible through time.

Last week when many members of my family were visiting, my daughter hauled out a huge bin of actual family photos. Some of these had been handed down to us by our families. Many others were snapshots I had printed out over the years since I had at one time carefully made annual photo albums of family doings.

The kids were hunkered down on the rug in the living room, pawing through these photos. "Look at this! Me when I was a baby!" So I had to tell this grandchild about the day he was born, how cute he was, and how his brothers and I went to Publix and bought him a birthday cake. His older brother remembers this event.

We see photos of relatives long dead and photos of people no one can identify. We see photos of events we all remember fondly and extend upon. This is such a family bonding. Everyone is talking at once, asking questions and explaining. "This is Daddy?" And I have to tell the story about this newborn son of ours who was born during the race riots in D.C. in 1968 and how it was.

These are the family stories. So many times these come up by looking at old photos. Our grandson, Quincy, who spends so much time with us, often tells me that he loves these family stories! He especially loves me to tell him about my adventures in the Amazon (where I went several times). He loves to hear about Grandma climbing up trees to visit parrots and seeing huge snakes.

When my kids send me dozens of their beautiful photos on line I am charmed and extend the seconds of the slide shows. I am in the loop. But what I truly treasure are a couple of real photos of those lovely grandchildren that I carefully download and print out.

I think we are in overload on photos. The photographic details of our life become meaningless when there are so many!

We have one wall in our house plastered from ceiling to floor in family photos- all framed. We all look at this! From time to time new photos are added, some deleted. Of course, anyone could see these and thousands more on my computer. But they don't.

I have a good friend who is the most amazing photographer! He posts many of his photos on line and documents everything in our community. His pictures have an immediate purpose and we all love them.

He has given me a couple of enlarged photos and I constantly look at them, and they inspire me. So much more relevant to my life than looking at slide shows from the web. I think we have to be able to really take time to look at photos, really pay attention. And who can do this in one second?

Thank god for iphones and the cameras and instagram and all the rest. But do keep on printing out some of those photos. Those are the stuff of family history.