Favorites...

I've been going through boxes and envelopes and drawers full of picture lately in preparation for a project. It's taking way longer than it would otherwise if I didn't feel the need to stop and pause over so many pictures, wade through the memories and get all reflecty about life. But that's part of the process, isn't it? I'm enjoying it.

I love looking at our family pictures, they're all important, but some speak to me in really poignant and significant ways. I've collected a little pile of what are without a doubt some of my most favorite pictures of all time.

Me when I was three, playing at my mom's old portable typewriter...a definite foreshadowing for my love of writing that would emerge throughout the years that followed. I'm so glad one of my parents took the time to take this picture.

A self-taken picture of me just a couple years ago on what I believe to be the most perfect hair day I've ever had in my adult life.

Me with my dad on his 70th birthday. I'm sitting on his lap in this picture, and to me that is such a sweet juxtaposition to where we were emotionally with one another just a few years before that when I had been going through a really rebellious time in my life, hurting everyone I loved along the way.

Four generations...me, my mom, her mom and her grandmother. I love photos like that, that capture in one moment a breadth of life that spans more than ninety years. I love looking for pieces of myself in these women. So cool.

My son and two of his best friends from high school. My son had a lot of friends in school, but these two were the ones who were over here the most, who did the silliest (and some of the dumbest) things together (plus some things I probably still don't know about...probably don't want to!). They're the boys I'll always think of when I think of the good times in my son's high school years. Because there were some definite not-so-good times then, it's important to me to have a tangible reminder that there was good then, too. That's what I want to remember.

Thank God for pictures...and memories.