This post was published in the Wilson Times Oct. 23, 2020.
When our daughter and son-in-law gave us a digital picture frame a few years ago, we received the gift gratefully but without great enthusiasm. The gift is a simple video screen, about the size of a 5x7 enlargement, that displays each of the photos loaded onto a thumb drive that plugs into the back of the picture frame. At the time, it was the latest technology.
For the next few years, the ever-changing picture frame provided some amusement and distraction as we sat casually and watched the photos take their turns across the screen. We changed the photos loaded on the thumb drive from time to time to incorporate photo collections of my father-in-law after his death and a collection of pictures spanning my life for my 60th birthday. We grew accustomed to the collections and gave the photos little attention. They were, as the digital expression goes, “wallpaper.”
Recently, however, I find myself stopped in mid-step as I catch a look at the photo-of-the-moment. I am nearly dumbfounded by a photo of a grandson seated in my lap, sometimes two grandchildren seated in my lap as I read a picture book to them. In another photo, I am seated in a little red wagon with one grandchild while our oldest grandson, just a toddler, attempts to pull the wagon around the yard. I know these grandchildren have aged ten years since they were as young as the picture shows, but I can’t help feeling transported back to the day the picture was made.
We are blessed with six grandchildren and have had the good fortune of spending time with each of them as they left the cradle and developed their own personalities. We took them on short trips, and we gallivanted with them in our back yard, playing games and inventing new games to spark their laughter and excitement. Moments so special they still bring a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes are preserved on that picture frame with the power to stop me in my tracks and make me stare, taking in the moment frozen on that small screen.
The technology on that screen is more common now. Everyone has “slide shows.” TV commercials use them. Convention venues incorporate them. Political ads use that power of pictures. A lifetime ago, I shot pictures with film and inserted the developed photos into a slide projector to shine on a screen for viewing. In a closet somewhere, I have a slide projector that was, in its day, the ultimate in home entertainment, and two dozen boxes of slides that are only useful when paired to that old slide projector. Our children and grandchildren got a few good laughs when we gathered them at a vacation cottage and had them watch many of the trays full of slides. The audience thinned rapidly after the first few minutes of grandchildren’s laughter at seeing their parents as small children.
If our children and grandchildren even glance at the digital photo frame on their rare visits to our home, I have not noticed. The pictures that stop me in my tracks are only uninteresting wallpaper to them.
My wife and I have discussed how quickly or grandchildren changed from the cute, cuddly, loving and altogether wonderful toddlers in those pictures to the teenagers who have their own schedules and interests and who now see us at eye level with our sagging skin, ancient ideas, out-of-touch thoughts and lost hair. We realize that the days of grandchildren’s visits and their wonder at our lives and stories are at an end.
I well remember two decades ago lamenting that the child I had held in one hand was now taller than I. But grandchildren are different from your own children. Parents are responsible for their children — providing food, shelter, moral principles, future college costs, etc. Grandchildren are more pure joy, delightful little people for whom you do not have ultimate responsibility.
A biblical blessing (Psalm 128) offers this: “May you live to see your children’s children.” I am living that blessing.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment