A Picture is Worth....

Sunrise over the back yard

I rose early one morning last week and sat reading in my comfy chair. As the light softened around me, I looked out the window and there was this beautiful pink and purple sunrise creeping up over the back yard. In an attempt to capture the rich colors, I rushed outside and took this picture with my phone. It is an interesting picture and quite pretty I think, but it is not even close to what I saw that morning. The grayish part at the bottom left was deep purple and the coral part in the middle a lush shade pink. This picture is but a poor representation of that stunning sky. And for that reason it's a sad little photo in my estimation. The reality of the moment was not captured in the least.

Quite a few years back, I drove a little red convertible - a Mercury Capri. It was a fun car but not very practical. It had a back seat but anyone over 4' tall had to fold in half to sit back there. And the roof leaked a bit - only when it rained hard. But I loved it! Mama was still living but the cancer was taking its toll. She and Daddy were visiting us for a few days and I asked Mama if she wanted to go for a ride with the top down. She agreed but didn't have a headscarf - any woman who lived through the 50's knew you had to tie your head up if you were going to ride in a convertible. We located a white shawl, she tied it on and off we went. Daddy stood on the porch as we left. She wasn't up to a long ride so we were only gone a little bit. As we headed back to the house she said if she felt better she would sit up on the back like a beauty queen and wave to Daddy - who was undoubtedly still standing on the porch. We laughed and sure enough when we pulled in, there he stood. He ran in the house as we got out of the car, returning a few seconds later with his camera.

Now, Daddy loved making pictures and he worried the tar out of us wanting us to pose. A few weeks later we would get an envelope in the mail with copies of his most recent shots. He got duplicates for us all - which explains why I have several big boxes of loose photos in storage. They are dear now. They were annoying back then. And he was determined to make Mama's picture in the little red convertible. She was already out by then and flat out refused to get back in. He was mad. But she marched in the house declaring she did not want her picture took. She died just a few months later and Daddy never did get a picture of her in that car.

As you can tell, I have vivid memories of that day. They are sweet and funny. And I am so glad Daddy didn't get his camera in time. Here's why. He would have captured an old woman with a thick white shawl tied on her head like a babushka, hunkered down in a little red car. The driver would have been an almost 40-year-old me wearing a baggy dress and cardigan - my go to style for decades. In my mind, though, she looked like Jackie O sitting up on the back of that car, the tail ends of a white silk scarf sailing in the wind. And I was Caroline, cool as cucumber in ginormous sunglasses. Me and Mama out for a cruise around the Vineyard. Imagination elevated reality.

Don't stop taking pictures - especially if they are of grandbabies or puppies or the beach - even if they annoy your family. But maybe, just once in a while, skip the photo and sketch a sweet moment in your memory. Because sometimes a picture reveals what we don't want to see. And sometimes a picture fails to capture what we do. But a lovely memory is not distorted by time or space... by life or death. It is a treasure. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a memory worth? I don't think I can count that high. Selah.