People don't take pictures anymore--pictures you can hold in your hand and look at.  They are all inside their cameras--saved to a cloud, whatever that is.  My camera has pictures saved on it somewhere.  I never look at them.

But the pictures I took years ago, the pictures my parents took, I look at those.  You can touch them.  I don't like pictures I can't touch.  They don't seem real.

I have pictures hanging in my living area on walls, on buffets, on side pieces and end tables.  They are reflections caught from a moment in time.  There is one of my grandmother and grandfather.  Another of their entire family--my mom is probably fifteen or sixteen.  I have one of Craig and Steven on a street in Paris thirty years ago--he is leaning over his son (30 yrs old now) who is in a stroller. There's one of Becky leaving for college as a Freshman the day Jon is going to kindergarten.

There is one of my mom and her sister Ruby--Ann's mom--walking down main street in Ft. Smith.  They are dressed to the nines, strolling in step, arm in arm.  They have just found out that my mom is pregnant with me.  They are smiling.  They were best friends all their lives.  They are gone now.

I have a picture of my four children.  Young, their futures before them.  And in my bedroom, one entire wall is covered in wedding pictures.  My parents, Ken and me,  my children, their children, my aunts and uncles, and cousins--all on their wedding day.  Everyone is so happy.

I don't want pictures in my camera.  I want them out where I can see them.  And touch them.  There is a picture of Ken and me passing under the military arch of swords, of us cutting our wedding cake.  It is almost like I am there again.  I am young and have no idea of what is to come.

Moments in time.  Caught forever.  And someday, someone will ask, "Who were these people?"  I know that is true because when my mom and dad were gone, I was the one who cleaned out their house and went through their pictures.  I asked everyone in the family if they knew who all those people in the pictures were.  Nobody knew.   My mom had all her high school pictures of friends in an album.  I kept them for awhile, just in case.  I wonder who they were.