Nostalgia

The quest against clutter and for order continues today.  As Shea watches Wild Kratts and Tracy prepares for a Christmas party with her girlfriends, I work through even more "stuff."  In the quest to organize my office, Tracy pointed out a stack of photo albums.

"What are you going to do with those?"

"I don't know.  What are they?"

"Your photo albums."

I open the photo albums and am greeted by pictures from my childhood.  My mother put two albums together when she was working her way through all the family pictures.  One of the albums is all me though.

The album with the mountaintop is one I put together when I was younger, maybe just after high school, maybe right before I left the state and traveled to Missoula, MT.  I wasn't planning on browsing the pictures, but I couldn't help myself.  As I opened one of the albums my mother made, I was shocked to find a couple of pictures in there that really transported me back to my childhood.  The first one I discovered was a picture of me napping in our old house.

I apologize for the poor quality of the image, but it is a picture of a picture.  I used to love napping on linoleum floors.  I remember being young and crawling into the kitchen with my blanket, or a sleeping bag, and crashing out in the middle of the house.  The cool floor pressed against me was such a comfort then, and I remember listening to my mother move through the house.

The second picture evokes so much of my childhood.  It is a picture I remember hanging on the refrigerator at the homes of almost all my friends back then.

It is a picture of the "posse."  The group of boys I used to call my best friends in the world.  The BMX Bandits of North Grant Street!  The lot we are pictured in is now a home, and we've lost two of the boys to moves out of state and one to death, but this picture makes me smile like none of that matters.  For some reason, looking at this photograph today transported me back to that time, to that dirt track, and I am lifted by the memory.  I wonder about these guys.  I see one of them on a semi-regular basis, but time and distance have made us acquaintances more than close friends.  Even though this is true, I still love these guys.  Love them for being in this picture with me and giving me the gift of a joyous childhood that was filled with crazy bike adventures and a whole lot of laughter.

They are all good boys.

I'm going to spend some time flipping through the rest of the albums tonight with a glass of red wine in hand.  Hopefully my wife is in the mood for some stories because I feel like that's how I want to spend my evening.