It’s not spring yet officially until two more weeks, but the warm, sunny
days and the fragrant freesias blooming in my garden activate my spring urges. Our
apricot tree wears soft white blossoms, and the perfumed air is intoxicating.
When I’m not outside talking to the
seeds I planted, encouraging them to rise and shine, I’m tackling projects like
cleaning out a closet in the spare bedroom. It’s a job I’ve dreaded – sorting
through boxes and albums of slides taken by my parents on multiple trips and
cruises to Jamaica, Norway, Scottish Highlands, the Pacific Northwest, Chile. Ten
boxes, 70 slides per box. Through a mini-viewer I quickly check for people
photos. Here’s a surprise. Shots of two survivors of the plane crash in the
Andes involving an Uruguayan rugby team. They were staying at the same hotel as
my parents while here in Chile for my wedding.
I scan for good photos of my parents to save: my father gazing up at the
Matterhorn, and stretched out for a siesta on a Jamaican beach; my mother, a Jackie
Kennedy look alike, petting a burro, and posing before a bright flowering
poinsettia bush. I study their facial expressions, the way my father stands
slightly hunched, my mother’s wide smile. It seems unfeeling to throw out the
slides, their memories, but they are not my memories. Now ten years after my
mother’s death and twenty after my father’s I feel ready to let go. I’ve saved
a few dozen – my first step towards photo closure.
There is more in that dusty
closet that I must face: my son’s paintings from childhood art classes, my own attempts
at painting, binoculars inherited from my husband’s grandfather, a fishing
tackle box, a game of Scrabble and…a slide projector. I tell my husband, “We
can put the slides of our travels into the empty carousels – your stay in
Germany training for the Mexican Olympics and my Peace Corps years.” Maybe someday we’ll have a slide show and
reminisce about the days when we were young.
