I suspect that in most homes, there are books of family photos. Such collections in many houses tend to be on top shelves of closets or even in attics where they sometimes become forgotten visual histories of the residents.
Those accumulations of memories are sometimes forgotten until a loved one passes away so that a powerful need for happier times arises as a kind of balm to help soothe the awful sense of loss over final goodbyes.
An irony occurs when most tears are shed over the funniest or most embarrassing images of us when we were most vulnerable at our youngest times.
Family photo albums are like time machines that can take us back to the recent or distant past as a reminder that time has taken us all on inescapable journeys back to both joys and sorrows that accumulate over many years so that images can bring back those whom we have loved and sometimes those whom we have forgotten over time. Those photo albums open forgotten doors of memory and experience that sometimes show us the width and breadth of lifetimes and open doors we may have thought were closed forever.
So the next time an annoying relative gets a camera and flashbulbs ready to capture a moment of unison for later on, just remember that someday the result may be priceless, even if forgotten, treasure to bring back for a precious moment those who loved us and those whom we have loved. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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