picture pages

i have undertaken the herculean task of organizing my family's box of photos. most families have a collection of photo albums that act as a timeline of their lives. we have a photo box. which basically means 30-odd years worth of photos dumped into a box. pretty simple.

so for christmas vacation 2009, i spent $300 on photo archival paper, $50 on 8 hot pink binders (mom's choice) and 10 hours and counting so far on coercing each picture into its glossy place with my mom's korean soap operas playing in the background.

some of you may regard this project as the punishment given to medieval thieves and other social miscreants before thumb screws were invented, but i actually enjoyed my solo walk down memory 6 lane highway.

though i now have a ravaging "alexa ray joel/christy brinkley" syndrome (you know, realizing that your mom is way hotter than you are), don't worry, my friends, i won't curse out my dad for his dominant genes and then chomp on 8 natural sleeping pills. maybe my mom's genes skips a generation and my kid will inherit her perfectly perfect nose. (picture: my mom desperately trying to sculpt my nose into place while the cartilage is still young and malleable).



i also came to realize that between the ages of zero to 12, i only had two faces that i like to call, "you are the funniest person in the world!" and "i really need to take a dump." see exhibits below (funny, followed by dump, in case there is any confusion...i understand that there might be).





the hardest part of this project is not the attention to detail required (particularly since i have none), but the decision of when it's OK to throw away pictures. some decisions are easy. i guiltlessly threw away all of the pictures that had my dad's finger in front of the lens. and all the pictures that came back from Vons with a removable sticker that said, "best quality. no charge. take photography lessons" but then came the harder choices. do i throw away the double pictures? the quadruple pictures? do we really need 4 pictures of me playing piano, especially when we have 20 others just like it? do i throw away the pictures of the unidentified animal from the San Diego zoo? a picture taken just when the tiger went back into its cave?

it's kind of like playing God. or deleting history. or stealing memories. i find myself contemplating throwing away people in my life that have broken my heart or people that i just don't like anymore. i do. because they are my memories and i choose to hit the delete button on them. i consider throwing away pictures of people who have broken my mom's heart. pictures i know will cause her pain. people she has actively tried to forget. do i? is that my decision? i keep them but put them in an envelope with a big heart with an X through it. she knew exactly what those pictures were and said i could toss them.

do i throw away the pictures of my dad's home perm (lady ogilvie, tight curlers, administered in the kitchen by my mom, the amateur esthetician) because i KNOW he'd rather forget that experience? i kept them and made them the front cover of one of the albums.

what about all the ones from college where i don't even look like myself (amazing what 30 pounds can do to you)? i burn them because, truthfully, i'm tired of filing.

just kidding. i kept those blasted pictures. just so i'll have something to tape on the fridge when i need to lose some weight.

now, if you'll excuse me, i have 2,000 more pictures to file.