Eidetic

I remember

getting caught as a

teenage boy staring

at a girl sitting across the room from me in class

and her response:

“take a picture, it will last longer.”

(Gen X is nothing if not masters of sarcasm.)

In 1983

if I wanted a picture

or

something that would last longer

I’d need a little 110 camera

my grandmother gave me before a summer trip to the beach

and a couple of bucks for some film

and the patience to snap the other

twenty three photos on the roll…

so that I could

drop it off at the Fotomat

while Carl, the night manager

perused my choices of scenes I deemed

worthy of

wanting to last a lifetime.

It’s 40 years later and

we’ve all got Carl and the Fotomat in our pockets

and I’d imagine if some freckles

or pig tails catch a young boys eye now

that girl won’t say

“take a picture, it will last longer”

but

 “Mr Jones, Stevie is taking pictures of me!”

and that’s a whole ‘nother level of cringe.

Looking at pictures this afternoon of

my mom and dad on their wedding day

and of my boys at the mall shortly before

telling Santa how cool a new Playstation would be

and of my daughters, trying to look cool and unenagaged

while on a family vacation

I realize that

pictures really do last longer.

That constant need in me to

capture a moment in such a way

that memory doesn’t fall victim to

age and

time

and

rose colored revision…

(or, worse, cluttering that memory with all those other twenty three pictures filling up that roll)

just the thought buries me in regret and melancholy.

How can I possibly take enough pictures that

last remotely long enough to

remind me of just how beautiful She is every single day?

Photographs of mountains in the distance

a chalky gray sky against a burnt umber sunset

or just mom and dad standing in a shot that invokes

a memory of my grandmother standing there,

her Kodak camera in hand,

telling them to smile…

they all tell a story and

fill in the blanks that

memory tries so hard to recreate.

I sometimes wonder if my wife

When,

for the 14^th time this evening,

catches me

staring at her again

thinks to herself

“take a picture…”

I am, love.

I am.