Click

The sound of a camera's click has often held a heavy dose of the proverbial love/hate relationship. When I was a kid, my mom and a camera usually meant smiling when I didn't feel like it or pausing play with the gift I most wanted for a snapshot I didn't want at all. Of course, now that I have those memories locked in time forever, I'm thankful she pushed the point.

As I got older, especially those teen years, I began to see pictures as a pseudo-documentary of puberty's cruel joke on females. I was reminded of this stage recently when I went with a friend as she shopped for her homecoming dress: for teenage girls, the thighs are routinely too large, breasts too small, legs too short, and hair too dark. Like your thighs, breasts, legs, and hair? No worries: the list of anatomical errors is long enough, we're bound to find something that peeves you. When I was 15, I saw a body too short for boys, hair too straight and ordinary for commenting, and a nose that looked suspiciously like a pointed weapon. Now, I see an athletic frame, honey-toned hair that requires little effort, and the nose...well, the nose is what it is. And I ain't gettin' it fixed.

Pictures show that about us, I think: those aspects of us that once bothered us but matter little now. They also capture the memories of the best group of gals on that trip you took long ago. Or document the tiny newborn hands that escape your memory five years later. Or spotlight the perfect kiss, the ideal day, or those jeans that you never knew made you look so skinny!

But when my kids get their pictures updated, I love the sound of that click. I can't keep them little forever: I don't know that I want to keep them little forever: there's too much good stuff left to live. But portraits let me look again and again on that gorgeous one, two, three...eight...nine year old face as it grows each year. I see the teeth that have fallen out and the new ones grown into their places. I see the new freckles on Gracie's nose and how much Elijah's hands really look just like Craig's. In 20 years, I'll still see how Judsen's ears stick out from his head, just like mine. And just like my dad's. And when my dad leaves for Home, I'll see him in those ears.

Yes, yes, I hope to have the real-life versions of those portraits all my life to look upon and grin and remember. But those ears won't stay the little templates they are now. Grace will someday have all her adult teeth and, with each passing year, I'm reminded of just how fast that will happen. And Elijah's hands will one day be just as big as Craig's...maybe bigger...and I won't be able to fit them inside mine then like I can now.

But portraits help me remember all of that now.

And when the time came when it was possible we'd never take another family portrait with Craig in it, I vowed I'd capture that unit, too. So we hang that portrait above a sign in our house that says, "Home is where your story begins."

But, of course, only one word really tells the best story.

Click.