It seems like yesterday.
If you close your eyes, you can see them crawling along the kitchen floor, can’t you? You can hear their diaper crinkling. That impish grin.
You can smell the lotion you used to put on their wee tiny toes.
You can hear the baby monitor hum. And that creaking floorboard that used to wake them up when you stepped on it just so.
You can see her holding her backpack on the first day of kindergarten, when she wore her favorite dress with the yellow flowers. You can still feel her nose nuzzling your neck as you said goodbye at drop off.
You can still see him struggling to put on his favorite shoes – were they Paw Patrol? He ran so fast with those shoes on…
You remember. You remember so very much.
Because it all matters so much.
And when you close your eyes, you can see all of the images of your lifetime. It’s like a silent movie that plays just for us mothers.
But nobody else in your family can see that movie. They can’t watch your mind sift through those memories - touching them, honoring them.
And eventually, you must open your eyes.
We have digital or physical pictures of them, of course. Some are on hard drives. Some are on phones – even that old one in the pantry with the shattered screen. Some are in clouds, on tablets, on flashdrives or CDs.
But that’s where they lay. In bits and code, on shelves and in closets. On laptops that can crash and tablets that can be stolen.
Scattered between devices, our tens of thousands of images – tens of thousands of memories – lay waiting to be shared.
And you would share them. But you can’t find that one image of the baby and grandma.
You can’t get your hands on that picture you took of the kids making that snowman at the old house – where did it go? You saw it last year.
With more images added to your hard drive every year, it gets harder and harder to find them. It’s as if they’re lost forever.
Your memories are worth more, aren’t they?
Your family is a work of art that shouldn’t be lost - shut away in a drawer, or in a cloud, or on a CD that’s just waiting to break.
You know you should do something about it. But who has the time? Your family time is short as it is. So rather than searching for photos, rather than organizing and sorting and printing like you know you should, you’ve opted to spend the moments you have with the people you love, and try to forget about this project that nags at you.
I want you to know that there’s a better option.
I give people like you – people whose love language is photography – a gift they have wanted for themselves and their family for years: all of your family’s priceless images organized by date, backed up in triplicate for safekeeping, printed and organized and ready to share.
Making your memories available and tangible is as simple as an e-mail and a conversation. With less than one hour of your time, you’ll have memories at your – and your family’s - fingertips.
When you want to show your aunt that picture where your daughter looks just like mom, you’ll know right where to look. And, even better, you can hand her a physical photograph that you can enjoy together over coffee at your kitchen table.
When your child asks to see his favorite baby picture, you won’t be toggling between three hard drives and two cloud accounts to find that one picture of him in his Sesame Street onesie.
When someone who occupies a place in your heart passes, you won’t be frantically looking for images of them. You’ll know right where they are, and you’ll take comfort that you can so easily share them with everyone else in those moments when you crave one last look.
My clients can’t believe how easy this is. They can’t believe how much stress it relieves.
And they can’t believe they didn’t do it sooner.