A Place on the Wall

We moved to North Carolina in 2010--the year Savana graduated from high school. As she had recently gotten her senior pictures, we hung an 11x14 in a nice frame on the living room wall in our new home.

And then in 2013, Darian's senior picture hung beside Savana's.

All that's left is Jace.

2022.

Jace asks me regularly, "When is my picture going to hang on the wall?"

This past Christmas when we were at Mom's house, we three girls were standing in Mom's bedroom and Lori started laughing at this absolutely horrific photo that Mom has plastered on her wall. At the time, I was in 7th grade, Tami was a senior, and Lori was in college. It was taken at Olan Mills and hung in our living room for years. Thankfully, it has since graduated to a distant corner in Mom's bedroom.

The four of us (as Mom came in to see what we were laughing about) gazed at that photo for a bit, laughing and telling Mom that it really is abominable...but she won't be daunted. "I like it," she said firmly, and that was that. It is, after all, her bedroom--and, for that matter, her picture.

In our hallway, I have a collection of photos over the years. One of my favorites is of the girls when they were 2 1/2 and 6 months old. Savana is lying on the floor--Darian propped over her back--and they are both looking up at the photographer with the most adorable smiles. It's a perfect picture that belies the ensuing drama. Just after the photographer snapped the photo, we all noticed a horrific odor hovering over us like a thick cloud. We were in the midst of potty training Savana and ... Oops.

Grandma is there in my hall as well--a photo taken a couple of years before she passed. When I walk by, I often stop and gaze into her eyes. I miss you, Grandma.

On the other side of the hallway we have a collection of old timer photos. One of them was taken on Roy's and my first year anniversary as, according to the list that outlines what gift you give for each anniversary, the first year is paper. We lived in Loveland at the time and so we travelled 30 miles up the Rocky Mountains to a small community nestled up there called Estes Park. Now, Estes Park is well-known and visited by millions every year--we probably wouldn't even recognize it anymore. But at the time, it was still cozy and quaint and one of our favorite Saturday afternoon agendas. That afternoon we took that photo and then headed to our favorite spot that served healthy smoothies before healthy smoothies were the rage. Of course, that was the only year that we paid attention to the list that outlines the appropriate anniversary gift, but it's definitely one of my most treasured anniversaries.

A few years later we went back to Estes Park and had another older timer photo taken. This time, Savana was 18 months old and I was pregnant with Darian. Savana has a sore above her eye as she, that morning, ran into the corner of a piano at the home of the friends we were visiting at the time, and? We'd just found out we were having another healthy baby girl.

And the list continues--photos that reflect stages of life, memories of our beloveds, the best of times.

This summer I will have a new set of photos that reflect yet another milestone: the wedding of our daughter. I am thinking that this corner of senior photos that hangs in my living room? It may very well be time to rethink it. The girls may graduate to the hallway and the living room corner may herald an entirely different look: current photos of my kids, a photo that reflects our expanding family.

Maybe Jace won't have to wait until 2022 to actually find his place on the living room wall after all.