Leather Photo Albums

It seems strange and ironic to me how many memories I have of looking through my mom's old leather photo albums. It is almost as if the memory the second time around – while we glanced at the pictures in the leather photo album – were more powerful than the memory of the actual thing happening. Sure I can remember pieces of family vacations, holiday parties, birthdays, and other milestones in my life, but they are all jumbled together. Every time my mom pulls out one of the leather bound photo albums, however, something significant has just happened.

The last time that she pulled out the leather photo albums was right after my sister had her first child. The photographs had been gathering in shoe boxes for a long time, and she kept swearing that she would put them in the leather photo albums, but she never got around to it on her own. It took a major, life-changing event to finally provide the impetus for her to take out the leather photo albums and get to work. I was there, and together we went through the new baby pictures. She immediately wanted to put them in the leather photo album, of course, but she was very meticulous and particular about the order of things. First had to come first, so we had to Go through hundreds of pictures before we got to her goal and could finally put the baby pictures away in the leather photo albums.

Before that, the last time that she pulled out the leather photo albums was when I brought my fiancé home. Of course I knew this day was coming – it comes to all people – yet nonetheless I was embarrassed for her to see the leather photo albums filled with baby pictures. However, My mom was better behaved than I had expected. She only showed off one leather photo album, and she avoided some of the more embarrassing stories.

Now I am sitting in the living room with her again, looking at the leather photo albums. I have just gotten married myself, and there is a lot to do. Between the wedding planning, the honeymoon, and some business obligations when I returned, there has been almost no time to sit back and reflect in the past several months. Now, however, we have our first opportunity to really look at the leather photo albums together and put the wedding photos away.