Leady: Old photos

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-Photo from pixabay.com

A red hat. A white shirt tucked in. Grey baseball pants and a baseball bat with my hands slightly choked up because it is too heavy.

That’s the first of many pictures that were looked through this weekend. It was one of my first pictures taken from my t-ball days. I had the cheesiest smile where I wouldn’t show my teeth, I would just grin.

Looking through old pictures is something I feel like every family does once in a while.

My mom, my girlfriend and I decided to dig out all of the old photos we had in our closet. Let me just say that there are about five to six bins that each have more than 1,000 photos, minimum.

There is so much to look through; thus, if we looked at each individual picture it would take probably a solid two days.

We each looked at different bins and laughed at a few pictures that we all thought were funny. When I was younger, I was always famous for making funny face in pictures and trying to be funny.

For some odd reason, I was always dirty in my pictures, covered in mud, dirt and barefoot. This sparked myself getting the nickname of “orphan.” Which is all fine and well until you’re seven years old thinking you’re actually adopted…

Don’t worry, I’m not actually adopted… As far as I know.

While going through more pictures I started to realize that there was a portion of my life I feel like was kind of missing.

Although I feel like it was missing, it still happened. There probably wasn’t a reason it felt like it was missing, it was probably part of a bigger idea.

The time missing happens to be the section of my life that my parents were getting divorced. This made me a little sad until I took a step back to realize what it meant to have a family.

Having a family is about making memories, and creating a timeline together. The pictures of my parents together, with my brother and me, are always full of happy memories and good times.

After they split, I still had a good time, but it’s a different kind of fun. It’s fun that needs to be had with the individual parent, rather than the collective unit.

Pictures from that middle part aren’t there because we didn’t know how to take it, and how to cope with the idea of being separated. Once we found that out, there was more pictures again in my later years as high school began to wrap up.

Sure on the surface it may seem sad, and a few of you may be able to relate to this, but it’s really not.

That time in my life hurt, like in my article before, but we have all moved on. It just makes me realize how important it is for those people who need to take a million pictures, and that document everything.

When I’m older, and my kids complain that I “take too many pictures,” I will show them this article, along with the pictures and show them that it’s about the timeline and keeping it together.

Life passes too quick for us to dwell and sulk, we keep pushing and one day it’ll all be worth it to look back and remember all those moments where we wear our red hats and tee off.

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