"Our lives are a flood of images and we are collectors who keep a strange assortment of images: moments of extreme emotion, pain, beauty, and fear stand out. Events we're taught to remember: weddings, graduations, births, deaths. Then there are the millions of images that we can't shake out of our heads, that come to us at strange times - things we can't remember why we remember: the gold threads in an old stereo speaker, the way the light hit a thousand cars in a parking lot by the water, the face of a stranger in a restaurant, a friend standing in a pool - you can't remember where, slapping the water with the flat of her hand. Memory is a sieve that holds curious things. A life is a trail of strange, colorful memories."
-Risa Mickenberg
"...But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4, and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in a hurry to get on to the next things: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less."
-Anna Quindlen
...And then I think of my daughter, who is being baby-sat for the 4th of July weekend by her Aunt Lisa. She's not with me tonight and I miss her terribly. This house doesn't feel right without her. I don't feel right without her...
So I begin to look at photographs taken a few weeks ago...and my eyes begin to tear out of love for this little soul. Words could never describe how amazing of a soul she is. And I've learned to cherish every moment, the good and the bad...Because moments always pass faster than you ever really think they will.
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