Some pictures are worth remembering. Some pictures you just know perfectly. I have about 13-plus years worth of snapshots on my website. And after Lauren, earlier today, posted a picture of the two of us from our 2013 trip to Ireland I wondered if I could recall the first one of her I uploaded.
The sun-eating one, I figured, had to be high up the list. And so I went back through our early months of knowing one another. I scrolled through the people we knew, most all of whom have kept us around, since then, until there I was, 12 years ago. February 2005. I remember the night I took this picture going down the highway, and that one is probably from a library, because I have always liked repetition in my pictures. These next two are at a Super Bowl party in Five Points we were invited to.
The Patriots beat the Eagles in that game. Paul McCartney was the halftime show. (I had to look this up.)
And, oh look, here are a few sunsets and clouds. And there she was. The 10th photo I uploaded in February 2005, the first one of her.
We were in her car. I know precisely where that was, two cities, two jobs (for each of us) and one car ago. She was probably taking me home after work one day. We were carpooling at the time. We’re traveling north, to soon turn west.
That next weekend we got invited to a dinner party — (thanks again, Laura!) and sometime after that we realized we were getting invited to places. That people in our little world thought of us as a package deal. I skimmed through the rest of the 2005 series of photographs. Jamie shows up, and so does Greg and Brian. Look, there’s Justin and RaDonna and Wendy, too! There are family shots in there, also. There are pictures of colorful people that you pass by in life. There are blurry, low-res, sometimes underexposed pictures in the collection. There are trips and sports and bands and Lauren figures into most of all of those pictures, somehow, even though she’s not in a lot of them. That’s how you remember, though, the circumstances and the stories and the time you went to the place and saw the thing and tried the unusual item on the menu. “Who” is how you remember those. Some are worth remembering. Some you just know perfectly.
