For many years now, I have wanted to immortalize my snapshots in time...that is, I have wanted to scan my pictures into our computer and digitize them for life. How much easier life would be with all of those pictures at hand! Teachers could request pictures of their pupil (aka - my child), and I wouldn't have to go through years worth of photo albums to find one from his/her toddler years, or another one in the sport of choice. For the "Star of the Week" event, I could simply email in the four or five pictures, and not have albums lying on my dining room table for the weeks to follow. This was all before I actually spent time beginning this process.
I just spent two entire days scanning and downloading pictures, rotating and cropping them, labeling them, then uploading them to a newly created album. I began the process where common sense dictates - the wedding albums. That is where this life, this family began. And this is where memory lane began.
We were a young couple. I had to laugh at our youthful appearances, not to mention the hair and the outfits. (I have yet to allow my children to look through these albums; I don't think I can handle their laughter quite yet). There were many pictures of people who are mere memories now. There are pictures of couples who are no longer couples, children who are no longer children, friends who are parents, parents who are grandparents. There are pictures of people who have moved in and out of my life, whose faces I hold next to my heart, and others who I struggle to remember their names.
I struggled with how to label these pictures. I kept thinking of the future generations who might one day look at them. Do I label me as "Autumn" or "me"? Do I label my grandparents by their given names, or by "Grandpa" or "Grandma", so that the ghosts of the future know their relation to me? Do I label relatives by their relation, or by their name, so that years from now someone knows how we were all connected? Does any of this really matter; will anyone really care?
I started feeling a little sad at the idea that, try as I might to preserve my life's memories, my future generations will not know me or know the times in which I lived, much the same way I look at old black and whites trying to figure out the place and time of those distant relatives. And I thought, why do we try and preserve this life? What is it that we wish to hold onto or send forth? By the time my great great great grandchild laughs her way through the photos, I will be celebrating my eternity in heaven. I can't explain the background of the snapshot, or who was standing by my side. It's just a thing, an object that remains behind for someone else to clean up.
Or is it? How much have we garnered by looking into the details of a photograph? How much history was learned simply by studying the trends, the inventions, or the people of the times? How connected does a person feel by the knowledge that (s)he resembles a relative of generations ago? How much of today has been changed by the mistakes of the past?
I'll continue to work my way through the many many photo albums that we've built over the years, all in the effort of preserving the life of today for the lives of the future. It will take me days, weeks or even months to scan all of the memories we've put to paper. But I'll do it with a lighter spirit, and label them in a way that makes sense to my future blood, giving them a snapshot of my time.
