My husband and I may soon have an opportunity to do something we did a long time ago: play music for a Scottish Country Dance class. With that in mind, we were reminiscing recently about our former dance band. We agreed on three members, then he described a fourth I could not place. He said she was diminutive, played the whistle, was married to a dancer who had retired from government work, and later relocated to the West coast with her husband to work for a high tech firm.

At this point, an aside to my husband who usually reads my blog out of loyalty. I haven’t already forgotten the discussion, I changed some details to make the couple less identifiable. Though if many of our friends are like me, that won’t be at all needful.

Back to the main thread. I could not place this couple at all, so we decided to look at our wedding pictures, where they showed up early and often. The moment I saw them, I felt a flood of affection. Oh yes, I cried, they were very good friends! Yet still neither of us could come up with their names.

We proceeded through the wedding album and came up with an impressive number of names, though not 100%. I saw some people I did not remember having attended, and we both did not see some people we were pretty sure were there. The most startling takeaway for me was my visceral response to pictures of these people. My heart was telling me these were important people in my life, though my head had no idea why.

Another surprise was the nostalgia engendered by seeing the ones who have passed on. At least six did not survive the 29 years from then until now, and two of those died quite young. It was affecting to see them again, playing music, dancing, laughing, interacting.

I’m not a big fan of pictures. Even before humans felt the need to capture and share not only every sunset but also every chimichanga, I thought that taking a picture of something meant you were stepping away from it, not really experiencing it. Once you critique a landscape for light and composition, or a gathering for color and action, you step outside of it, at least mentally. That’s not bad, it’s just not I want for, say, my vacation. I don’t want to remember setting up the shot, I want to remember looking down on the condor or walking over the coals. 

Of course we weren’t taking pictures of our own wedding, but seeing those pictures made be appreciate their existence. I didn’t have those warm memories a few minutes before. Or rather, I suppose I had them, but I didn’t feel them, not until they were evoked by the images.

That doesn’t always work for me, actually. I’m somewhat disappointed by how little I remember of my sons’ childhoods. Sometimes the pictures illuminate the past for me, but just as often I think, What were we doing, and why?