Six Times the Fun (and Chaos)

Standing on top of the world. Table Mountain, Capetown RSA

African nations represented; Halloween bash Joberg, RSA

Last Saturday I found myself at the Apple store. With our Apple. Which was broken. The MacGenius who serviced me was willing to download all of our data onto an external hard drive.

I felt panic. Our pictures! All of our pictures in jeopardy!

I explained to her, as clearly as I could, that I was willing to lose every pixa bite of information; Every document, every spreadsheet. But I was not willing to lose our photographs.

I asked her a dozen times to confirm that in her work she would retain every single little Kodak moment. The photos of us throwing a Halloween shin dig in Africa. The pictures of Lucy asleep next to Molly. I couldn’t bear to part with them. I was deathly afraid the genius would not be able to perform the weighty task.

She assured me she could.

I bought the external drive and left every visual memory of our family’s life over the last 2 years in her (hopefully) capable hands. I walked out feeling stripped of something vital. Not the computer, but the evidence of things experienced. The visual images of people we have loved across oceans and miles.

I didn’t know that I cling to these pictures. But I do. They remind me of the value of experience. They bring smiles and tears to me as they chronicle the life we’ve lived in and through. They are as close to a treasure as I have. No souvenir, no piece of furniture, no thing to touch or handle holds the value of the images that remind me of who we love, what we’ve seen, and who we have become because of it all.

MacGenius called Saturday night. She had retrieved everything-photos included-and the Apple is ready for me to retrieve it. I will spend an extra half hour under her tutelage to learn how to save photos in hard drives and on line so my life documented can remain safe from corrupt computers or natural disasters.

Most of you who read this blog are in those photographs. I wish for you to know that while the pictures themselves are precious, your friendship and love are more valued than the snapshots we have shared. The pictures are the reminders, but the memories stay with us even when MacGenius holds the fate of the photos in her proven to be capable hands.