Simple Living | Photo Prints
There was our life, tumbled to the table, spread out. Snapshots. In the hard places, the messy places, and the happy ones, too, frames were frozen. Us, captured. I blinked and the years dashed by, somehow, and the boys grew and I’d not printed those photos I’d taken, hadn’t set them out where we could see and remember how small those three were when we thought they were so big; how young we were when we thought otherwise.
Of course, there was an idea in my mind of how I wanted these photos to feel when I held them in my hands, how I wanted them to look when I set them out for us to see. Heavy matte paper, crisp ink, a white border all the way around (something like the old photos of our parents and their parents, and all the people back then). But, somehow, the task of going from captured to printed remained elusive. Idea to reality, thus far, an unreachable span (so silly, really).
Then, spurred on by an upcoming gift-giving occasion for my husband, who’d asked for them the most, I dove into our archive of photos over a scattered stretch of hours, over a scattered stretch of weekends, collected, edited, compiled a print order, and sent it in. They’re the Everyday Print Set, by Artifact Uprising (also my favorite printer of our Christmas cards for the last several years), some in squares, some in rectangles, all on the most lovely matte paper. They were just what I wanted, and just what he wanted, both. The day-of, he sat, opening the stacks, knowing, smiling through each moment as he thumbed through memories. The intangible, in a way, tangible once again.
But, having these stacks alone wasn’t the goal. In the hall, there quite literally hung a blank canvas, the front of it coated black with chalkboard paint back in the day, a surface for doodles and drawings, for wisecracks and wisdom, when chalk and boys and time put wonders on the wall. Now, it was a canvas for memories. A gallery board, in lieu of a gallery wall. With simple loops of transparent tape, I attached the photos. I overlapped some, didn’t others, and left the edges loose to float.
Over time, it will change and grow along with us. New captures added to old, always a place in the hall to pause and get lost for a moment, remembering.