Orange colored picture books

 Fireflies danced across the meadow as wildflowers swayed to a gentle breeze. The car is packed with tired kids and an empty picnic basket as darkness makes way for a billion stars. It's a quiet ride home, the radio softly playing as Mom sings along at barely a whisper. Dad points to a deer on the side of the road, our headlights scaring it back to the woods to the delight of the kids not asleep. Sunburned faces and a few cuts and bruises, all in a day's fun captured by Dad and the camera that stayed glued to him like a third arm. He would take the film to be developed tomorrow, and 24 hours later we'd sit down and look at everyone smiling and laughing at how we looked, like the one with Mom trying to hide her face, claiming she didn't even have her lipstick on. Each picture was a treasure, protected inside an orange-colored picture book and tucked away in Mom's big red trunk in the attic. As an adult, I looked through those little orange books, remembering picnics and days at the beach. Little league baseball games with me up to bat and Mom caught on film yelling and cheering me on. There were pictures of every new car Dad bought over the years, usually with him washing them. There were decades of birthday parties caught on film, as well as first communions, first haircuts, and every holiday known to man. I believe Dad was the only guy with a camera who took pictures of before-and-after things, like a shot of Thanksgiving dinner in all its splendor, then another shot of after dinner was over that could have been described as a bomb going off. Half-eaten slices of pumpkin pie and chewed dinner rolls. The turkey, once a thing of beauty, now a carcass Dad just had to take a picture of.This obsession of his held for every holiday before and after, but I'll admit that as I looked at all those pictures, I was happy he was so obsessed.

There's something special about those old pictures, a kind of window into our lives when time stood still long enough for him to capture each moment as a memory. I was gifted Dad's camera after his passing, a simple, inexpensive, no-frills camera, not even a timer he could have set to go off as he ran to get in the picture. I guess that's why he wasn't in too many of the orange colored picture books, except for a bunch of shots Mom took, like him getting an award for his work in advertising and him in uniform when he fought in Korea. I finished well into the night, looking at my life in black and white, then closing the red trunk that will remain closed in the attic until someone else dusts it off, sits on the floor, and opens the orange-colored picture books.

Mike  2026                                                  

Mike  2026