The Things You Find

To echo my earlier post, about remembrance of things past, my parents leased a new car last week, a wise decision given some of the physical limitations each of them currently face. In cleaning out their car, amongst the band aids, lip balm, tire pressure gage, pen/pad and other car necessities Dad had in there, I noticed Dad’s camera, tucked away in the arm rest. We had given it to him several years earlier for Christmas. It was his first digital camera and I remember he was absolutely thrilled to get it at the time. Dad was never one for being able to figure out how to work electronics. Growing up it was always PJ who would set up TV’s, VCR’s, DVD players, stereos, computers, you name it. Then he would show Mom and Dad. Eventually Dad would get the hang of it and become quite successful at operating this various equipment. He had that camera pretty well figured out.

Why would Dad keep his camera in the car you might ask? There were many instances when he would be out and about, where he would see an animal, a tree, a scene and in describing it to us all afterwards, he would reference wishing he had a camera to capture the moment. I mentioned to him to keep it in the car, something that had never crossed his mind. Once he had the digital camera that didn’t make him a slave to the limitations traditional film has with a specific amount of exposures in each roll, the camera stayed in the car, just in case. 

I finished emptyng the car of everything that was stashed in it and brought the camera inside. Dad's eyes lit up when he saw, as if he had forgotten he ever even owned it. I reminded him how to use it and he started going through the photos he had taken that were still on the camera (we had never gotten to the tutorial on how to transfer the pictures to the computer). Six years worth of photos were on the camera, dating back to 2008. Now Dad was not as prolific as PJ and I with regards to picture taking. Neither of us would be able to keep even a years worth of photos on any of our cameras, but Dad, well, he could and did. So it was six years worth of a road trip he and Mom took to visit her sister in upstate New York, boating on the lake with our family friend Bill, hiking Great Pond Mountain, snowshoeing through the deepest snow I've ever walked through, a flock of turkeys clamoring for bird seed in the backyard, road trips, birthdays, Holidays, dogs (long before I began to live with them and would just visit with Kane and Loki my boys). I'm going to set up an album of some of the photos Dad took with his camera if anyone wants to check them out. I'm always fascinated by what other people see, so it was interesting to see his perspective through these photos. Perhaps you will find it interesting as well.

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