Words and Pictures

Today is my Birthday. And although I know that realistic life expectancy falls somewhere in the seventies, as a child and young adult 100 always seemed like a better number to me. So now at 51, by anyone’s math, I’m probably on the back nine.

It’s a gorgeous fall weekend in Omaha. The leaves are golden and falling and we’re enjoying clear skies and nearing 50 deg F (8 C). The sun feels warm on my face and when I stop and sit my imagination runs. And sitting here in our home on this my third such birthday since launching My Quest I’ve just looked back over the list of my thirty-some previous posts. All these assembled words serve to remind me of all the many events to unfold in our lives over the past two years - many forgotten if not for the effort of committing them to the written page. And I’m left to wonder if every two years has been so eventful or if somehow these last two years have been different. I know the answer. Immediately I regret not picking up a pen twenty or thirty or forty years earlier. High school, college, early marriage, young daughters, career growth, maturing marriage, and growing daughters - what forgotten thoughts might now exist?

Fortunately I’ve always been a picture taker. And we have literally thousands of pictures that have captured so many treasured moments in our lives and in the lives of our children. We have countless photographs of treasured looks and remembered events and they seem to comprise the bulk of our memories. That’s how memories live sometimes – in pictures if not in words. But pictures fail to portray the image of the photographer – as if not present and remaining unaffected. Words are vastly superior in this regard. Words convey thoughts and feelings, joys and fears, excitement and contentedness. And I imagine years into the future, grandchildren could choose to read these words and would then know their grandfather more so than simply by a faded photograph in a long forgotten book. More so, I hope, than my scarce knowledge of my grandparents and theirs.