Why We Take Photos Even When We Should Just Hold Hands and How It's Kind of OK
The rain came through Ellsworth this one weekend. It banged trees against houses, tucked rocks into crannies, washed the gravel from the dirt roads and driveways into garden beds and the river.
Then it was gone.
Technically, it wasn’t even a big storm, not a hurricane, not a tornado, not a flood. What it was, I think, was a reminder of how things can change in an instant: a reminder of how lucky we are so many days of the year—all those days without storms.
Pretty close to that rainy day, an ambulance came in the middle of the night and stopped at our neighbors’ house. Her dad has heart trouble.
We spent the whole time the ambulance was there, standing together on our porch as the lights flashed red between the trees, wishing we could help, hoping for the best, trying not to think about all the things that can go wrong with a heart, and to, instead, think of all the things that can go right.
My ex spent most of that day trying to clean up the guest room for his aunt and uncle’s visit. Piles of photos were on the bed. Literally, there were hundreds, all taken in the previous two years.
Hundreds.
In the basement there were more boxes of his photos—pictures he snapped during other phases of his life. Most were of his daughter and his parents. Most of the rest just had boats in them.
He was constantly taking photos.
Em (my kiddo) and I would tease him when we were together on a trip, because it felt like he wasn’t really with us, but a member of the paparazzi shadowing ten feet behind or walking backward 15 feet ahead, clicking photo after photo.
It would have been easy to be annoyed at this, especially when it would have been so much nicer if he’d put the camera down, stop looking like a tourist, and just hold our hands.
But I wasn’t annoyed. Well, not usually, not unless I was having a Captain Insecurity Day. On those days, I wore a cape made of bad hairdos and cellulite shorts.
The reason why I wasn’t usually annoyed by the ex’s photo addiction is this: A photo captures a moment and pushes it closer to eternity.
Collectors of photos tend to be lovers of family, I think, people who want to remind themselves where they’ve been, where they come from, that they’ve loved, that they’ve been loved.
Maybe they are a little afraid that if they lose their photos, they lose proof of their lies: the smiles at the cameras or phones, the happy family hikes up mountains, the graduation where their mom laughed so hard she wet her pants, the dry wedding reception where half the relatives went outside to the parking lot to arm wrestle and drink gin, the birthday parties with egg salad in finger rolls.
You can’t be annoyed at someone wanting to keep all that even if it does clutter up the guest bedroom bed and the basement.
When the ambulance came to our neighbors’ house, I had a hard time breathing.
My bonus dad had died of a heart attack when I was in sixth grade and that night on the porch, I remember for the first time in almost two decades seeing his body on a hospital gurney. I remember the absolute knowledge that that was all there was then: a body.
His soul was gone from that body. I had no doubt. I could feel it everywhere in the room, down the hall, on the car ride away from the hospital. It was everywhere except in him.
A photo can’t capture a soul, I don’t think, but it can give us hints of it.
The smile laughing across a dad’s face as he tries to smoosh his large man body into a Dumbo the Elephant flying ride with his bonus daughter can give us a clue of his soul.
The look of pride in his eyes in a photo snapped at his son’s wedding can give us a hint of that inside part of him.
I have about three photos of my bonus dad, and most aren’t all that clear. I wish I had more—more hints of him, but I don’t. Still, I can almost feel the way he hugs, the way he smelled even though I haven’t seen that soul of his for decades.
Maybe photos are poignant ways to remember our tragedies and loves, eternal images to jump start our memories.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that when people take photos, I don’t complain about their need to document things, just as long as they let me take photos of them, too, so that I can remember.
Here’s the thing: Even if (like me) you hate it, try to let yourself be in the picture. Someday, someone might need that glimpse of your soul more than you ever imagined.
LINKS TO HELP GET OVER YOUR PHOTO ANXIETY
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