Trippin'

I took a break from writing the past few days to organize the grandkids' photos in an album. What a trip down memory lane! Were those tall, gangly teens once so tiny? It was like watching them grow again, but in fast forward.

I felt more than nostalgia when I looked at the pictures of my mother with her great-grands. She was so proud of them all. She knitted the oldest boy's baptismal robe and cap, a feat at her age and with her arthritis. She also made them all Pooh bears. That woman kitted and sewed up until her passing, even half blind and crippled. She was the poster child for determination and the will to keep going.

I decided to make an album because most of my photos, starting with the advent of digital cameras, are in random digital folders, some on my external hard drive, some on my computer and more on a flash drive.

 It took hours searching through them for a picture I knew I had taken. But, like my mother, I can persevere when I have a goal in mind -- in this case the ability to show a friend a photo without saying, "Wait a minute...maybe it's in this file..." or carrying my computer around with me.

I had a scare yesterday when the power went out just long enough for everything to shut down. Was I going to lose everything at the halfway point? I was so discouraged I walked away. Then, this morning, I went back to the site and lo! they had automatically saved my album for me. I was a happy camper.

Isn't that just like writing? Searching for that scrap of paper on which you scribbled down an idea while waiting for the light to change -- hunting for that chapter you inadvertently filed in the wrong directory -- and. worst of all, losing it altogether because you were so deep into the creative process you forgot to hit "save" before the storm you didn't notice approaching shut down the power?

As Mom would have said, "You knew better!"