what it's meant to me

Before I began this journey into blogging I contemplated what it was that I wanted to write about. What was it that I wanted to share? What can I say that no one else can? What am I bringing to the already crowded blogging table?

I was stumped.

Then about a week before Christmas my father called to tell me that he had found a box of old photos in my mother's closet. Ever since losing my mom three years ago I have been searching for these photo albums. Their covers are as memorable to me as the pictures they protect. I can remember vividly sitting crisscross on the floor with an album in my lap, turning the pages and looking back to ask my mother questions about a west coast cousin of hers or if the boy in a picture was my uncle Robbie or uncle Richie.

The heartbreak from losing her that was then coupled with gut-wrenching guilt and sadness in thinking that I had also lost these pictures was indescribably devastating.

And now, a few days before Christmas (my mother's favorite holiday) she had found a way to give them back to me. I know it was her that put them in my father's path and back in my life, because since she's been gone she's done this sort of thing before. She's found ways to let me know that she's closer than I think. But those are stories for another time...

The treasure that's found when you arrive at X marks the spot on the map, the pot of gold that awaits you at the end of the rainbow, the golden ticket that somehow cures your grandfather and wins you a lifetime supply of chocolate all pale in comparison to the value and meaning contained in my beat up box of old photographs.

My treasure, my lucky charms, my golden ticket.

From time to time I will look at the photos and get lost in a memory, transported to an occasion from long ago and it's in these moments that I finally understand what the most trusted doctor of our time meant when he said, 'Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.'

That Dr. Seuss sure knew his stuff, didn't he?

So this will be my blogging inspiration, my eternal spring of ideas, my muse in all it's Kodachrome glory. I will go down memory lane and come back ready to share what someone, somewhere, or something meant to me.

I hope you'll join me, 'til next time— keep it kind!