in 24 frames

a box of old photos stirs memories

I found a box of old pictures in my closet. I guess I forgot I put it there and it got lost amid the old blankets and clothes I’ll never wear again and video games I’ll never play again. The box does not belong to such company so I pulled it out of the closet and the inevitable happened - I started going through the photos and before I knew it hours had passed and I was firmly entrenched in the sort of nostalgia that brings yearning and tears.

The pictures were almost all of my kids in various stages of their lives, but mostly in their younger years, before I got a digital camera and started archiving their lives on flickr. Having real, tangible photos in my hand somehow makes nostalgia more pronounced. I touched each photo as if I was reaching out to my kids’ younger selves, whispering things like this feels like yesterday at one and my god this feels like a lifetime ago at another.

Here’s Natalie, still an only child, sitting in a box that a toy came in, grinning in delight. Here’s Daniel, two years old, putting together a puzzle of the United States with a deftness that defied his age. Here they are together at Disney World, Daniel crying at the giant Winnie the Pooh standing next to him, Natalie beaming.

I pause. Were they ever that young? They are 30 and 33 now, full fledged adults, people with lives of their own. They no longer need me, at least not in the same way they did when they were young, when these pictures were taken. So much has happened in the intervening years and it momentarily stuns me, makes me feel like I’ve been bludgeoned with the hammer of time.

Here they are at a petting zoo. And here, in their grandparents’ pool, a favorite place for them to be on hot summer days. Here’s Daniel with paint all over his face, a finger painting experiment gone awry. Here’s Natalie dressed as Madeline on Halloween. Here they are with their little friends who are also adults now, as happens, and they look for all the world like there’s nothing that could ever make them feel worn out with the world, as they sometimes do now.

Other parents love to tell you when your children are babies how quick the time goes, that you should cherish all the small moments and revel in their cute kid shenanigans and take the moments where you have to soothe them during an illness to heart. The moments where they need you and want you will fade, they say. Before you know it they’ll be in school, then they’ll want to spend more time with their friends instead of you. Then they’ll be driving and going to college and you’ll wonder what the hell happened.

It’s easy to see what happened. I was living my life while my kids were growing up, as one has to do. It’s not easy to take in every single moment as a potential memory. It’s not easy to savor every milestone, to make every single day meaningful. You have to go to work and deal with bills and maybe there’s a divorce or death to contend with and you avert your eyes from your kids for a bit to take in all the other things that are going on in your life and when you look up and they’ve gotten older. When did they grow out of their jeans, when did those adult teeth come in, when did they get so proficient at riding a bike? Sure, you were there for all those things, but not everything registers because you are so busy keeping yourself afloat.

Here’s Natalie in her duck raincoat. Here’s Daniel with a faceful of spaghetti. Here they are at their Star Wars birthday party doing the limbo with Darth Vader. Communions. Christmas mornings. Elementary school graduation. I stare at each photo like if I stare hard enough I could go back to that time and enjoy it again. Memories are not enough. I want to be there. I want to go back to when my days were spent entirely with my kids, putting together twenty piece jigsaw puzzles and watching Hap Palmer videos.

I put the photos in the best date order I can. And then I hold a bunch of them in my hand and fan them like a flip book, watching them age in what feels like 24 frames. I’ve made a little movie of their younger lives, watching them go from one kid to two, from toddlers to pre schoolers, from bathing suits to snow boots. I cry a little. I’m not sad. It’s more of a wistfulness that brings the tears, a yearning for the time when things seemed simple, when their lives weren’t fraught with student loans and career crises, when I could slap a band-aid on them and that would make them feel better about things.

Those parents who told me that time flies were right. It does. You never stop thinking, weren’t they just four or five? Wasn’t I just wishing that they were old enough to be self sufficient? And now that they are, I’m spending a night looking through photos of when they weren’t. Life is funny like that.

Here they are on Christmas morning. Here’s Natalie helping me do the dishes. Here’s Daniel eating an entire loaf of Italian bread. I flip through a different batch and watch another disjointed paper movie of my kids’ childhoods play out. Then I put all the pictures back in the box with a promise to myself to put them in a proper photo album, maybe scan them all first. I text both of them to tell them I love them. Maybe I’ll ask them if they want to do a jigsaw puzzle together.