Old Photos and Mirrors

Well, it's a reality. You really know you are old when Greg Allman (of the Allman Brothers Band fame) is on the cover of AARP Magazine. Okay, not really - it was Georgia Magazine. But when I first glanced at it, I thought it was  AARP magazine. Because Allman looks like a senior citizen with a pony tail. It's in my face everywhere I go. I mean, literally in my face, as my super-magnifying, wrinkle-illuminating make-up mirror so achingly reminds me each time I go there. I have a love-hate relationship with that thing. Without it, my eyebrows would be reminiscent of Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest. But it is not a pretty sight by any stretch of the imagination - and yet I must gaze there daily if I am to "put on my face." A framed picture sits on my desk beside me as I type this. It is an adorable photo of my Kindergarten class at Barrow School Elementary in Athens. I can name almost everyone in the photo. A couple are no longer with us, many still live in Athens, but almost everyone still looks the same, only more used. They probably see the same thing I do in their make-up mirrors if they dare to go there. Yesterday, there were more reminders of years passing, as I spent the afternoon going through a box of old photos. I am one of those horrible people who has, over the years, simply thrown my pictures into a box, with the intention of one day getting them organized. Now, decades later, they are still in the box, only more disheveled than ever. There are photos of my grandparents intermingled with wedding shots and pictures of childbirth in all it's gory detail. There are even some of people I don't even know. Anyway, as I sifted through the mess that is evidence of my life these past 60+ years, I determined that now is the time to get it together and catalog all those memories into some sort of format for future generations to peruse, if they are even interested. I see photo after photo of this pretty young thing. And in all those pictures she looks better to me now than she thought she did then, if that makes any sense. Today our lives, including all our snapshots, are on our computers. So, if they are not backed up, and something happens to our laptops, our history is erased. I never thought things would get so complicated in order to get easier. So I look at the cute little Kindergarten girl, fourth from the right on the second row, and think it's just as well she was unaware of all the next 50 years would bring. She didn't know her life's records would be shoved in a box and forgotten in a closet somewhere. She thought life would always be simple, with Mamma and Daddy taking care of all her needs and happiness as close as the next banana popsicle or trip to the library. And she wouldn't have known a wrinkle if it crawled in her lap. Okay, enough rambling and musing. I have to get on with my photo project before I get too old to give a crap.