Photos of real life

I was looking for a photo that I thought I had seen recently, in my unpacking and sorting and putting away of things. But either I can't find it now, or it wasn't really the photo I thought it was. And it strikes me as so typical of photos. They're so unreliable.

They always seem to catch you at your worst.

Or they really come out great and then promptly get themselves lost.

But that isn't really my topic for the day - just another sideline that I got caught up in when 'thinking.'

The photo I was looking for was of my father's 60th birthday. He had a 'timeline' cake with markers for significant events in his life - most of which were probably the births of various children and grandchildren and graduations and the like. I missed the event myself (living in Alaska and working in school systems usually means that you miss September birthdays in Tucson) but remember the photos that someone in the family had sent to me. Or thought I remembered them...

And so I am thinking about photos of my dad today, on this, another anniversary of his birth.

Somehow there is a 'tradition' in my family of taking birthday pictures of the Unfortunate Celebrant while he or she is actually in the act of blowing out candles on the cake. It is likely that I started that tradition my own self, but I hope not. Anyway, we all have years and years of likenesses of each other with blown out cheeks and pursed lips and hunched backs. Very becoming. This is probably why I was thinking that I saw a picture of my dad blowing out 60 birthday candles over his 'timeline' cake.

Oh well. Even though I wasn't actually there in the first place, I still have the picture, clearly in focus, of him and that cake and those wonderful sixty years.

So that's the thing about life. We live in each others' minds and hearts.

Always.