The Years of Memories, Captured by the Images

Why the photos should be developed, instead of just, saved onto the Clouds, translated…

My youth was with the photo developing shops all around.  As I was in love, a roll of thirty-six frames, I’d taken thirty-three photos of myself, posing, and, there were only three, that’s, saved for my handsome, but disliked getting pictures, my boyfriend; after I married, the world turned over upside down, the thirty-three pictures had my child’s naïve smiles, and, only three were, saved for me, to capture my life as a wife, as a mother.

Back then, I’d, cherished every single developed picture, I’d filed the pictured by time, by location, and, cut them into fitted sizes, to place into the photo albums carefully, with the captions I thought up by them.

illustration from the papers…

As the giant wheels of time rolled on by the photo industry, that bird of my youth, flew in, with time, into that yellowed photo album.  The world entered into the high-tech age.  Everybody has that thin gadget, that combined an assortment of functions: talk, talk, talk, they’d gone talking, everywhere.  Everybody started, storing every piece of information, into that small, metal plate for keepsake.  But, the unexpected happens, we’d thought, that the memories of those days of us traveling together, was hacked by the blackmail viruses, and, everything became, deleted in an instant. With that former experience, I’d recently, started, sorting through the memory disks, and took the photo to develop at the photo shops, and, several hundred of pictures of families gathering, get-together with friends, the number was enormous, that the owner of the photo developing shop smiled and said, that I am, his BEST customer in these couple of years! Before the New Years, my cherished grandchild came, and because we lived in separate cities, I’d often asked my son and daughter-in-law to send me his picture, so I won’t miss him as much, because I saw how the elderly folks, wearing their reading glasses, looking hard, into those small frames, and laughed and talked of their children and grandchildren, so, as I’d developed the pictures and posted them all on my doors, and sent it to my son, he exclaimed, “You got the pictures developed?”  I’d smiled and told him, “I’d even, put them in plastic films too!  The photos should be developed, that way, I can take them out to look at as much as I wished to, otherwise, it’d just, gotten lost, in a corner of my computer!”

From the high-tech age, I was certain, that he couldn’t understand how an elderly like me felt, as I saw the smiles on my offspring’s faces, and, what’s most warming was, as the developed photos got delivered into the hands of elders who don’t know how to use the computers, that smile started blooming from the corners of the lips, it’s difficult, for me, to describe that sense of joy into words!

how the memories were kept, old-school, photo from online…

In that heated summer afternoon, I’d started again, sitting by the tables, and, taping those thick photos onto the photo album pages, and I wondered, are these photos going to get turned into, a big book of stories?  Slowly, told the stories, of these, long and distant, years gone past?

If someone asked me, that if a disaster hit, what I would save first?  Other than my own life, I’d exclaimed, “Those photo albums!” because, anything I can get again, to rebuilt back up, only those, albums of photos, not only were they, from my years of accumulation, but, they’re of, those pasts I can’t get back, and I can’t buy that with any amount of money!

So, this, is only fitting, for the older generations, because they’re not adept in using computer, and so, they’d still preferred to have the photos developed and placed in an album, and, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just, that after years of accumulation, imagine how many albums you would have, versus if you’d saved everything to a disk???