Flashback to my Favorite Moment of Christmas 2017

Our three sons playing a tune together on the BIG piano.

(Youngest son's fashion statement is actually a survival technique for the itchy patch of poison ivy he acquired hiking around the lake!)

This is an especially special picture because  a) 3 very different sons I adore together  b) last Christmas before oldest son and wife move to New Mexico  c) last Christmas in that house -- #20!

There was a moment a few days after Christmas when I thought I had lost all my pictures -- including this one -- and I had a come-apart. 

As much as this move is exactly what we want, it still comes swaddled in a lot of loss. Downsizing is hard for a sentimental gal like me! But I am learning that all these things -- are just things. What they represent -- their meaning -- is inside me.

One way of coping as I've bagged and boxed, has been to take a picture. A picture doesn't take up any space, and it's a way to hold on to a memory of something. (Which is why I was devastated to think I'd lost all the pictures I've taken recently!) 

Funny thing: I have this memory of my father from just two months before he died, when he said, "sometimes I like the picture better than the thing." He was a lifelong photographer, and in that moment he was asking me to take a photo of him with a pair of pants that were now far too large, before we dropped them at a donation site. 

Papa was teaching me right up to the end, and in fact is still teaching me now! And you know what? I don't need a picture of that. It's imprinted on my heart. xo