Box of "old junk"

I was going through some old photographs over the weekend and stumbled upon some of my 4 year old son when he was a newborn.  Although, I'm not going to lie those times were ROUGH and I was in DIRE need of sleep (and probably a psychologist and couple bottles of wine), but more importantly those images just tapped into a part of my mind that I had forgotten about.  It had sparked something inside me.  I know I never printed them all out, or hung them on my wall or maybe even added them to his baby book (fine, judge me).  But it got me thinking, "What is the point of taking all of these images if I'm not printing & hanging these?".  Then it hit me, it's maybe 60...70 years from now, when Lochlan is sitting with HIS children or even his GRAND children and going through a box of "old junk".   I can hear him now, "Why in the heck would she take so many?! I'll never go through all of these!"  But hey, maybe he will.  It's those moments when he's curled up on a chair with his coffee in hand on a cold winter morning saying, "what's in this box?".  

It's the memories.  I take these images because this is time FROZEN on a piece of paper that can be pulled out on a rainy day.  It just made me realize that even though I take a MILLION photographs of my own son, it'll be the most important thing to him (or his kids, wife, grandchildren, great grandchildren) someday.  I'm not sure about you, but one of my favorite things was finding black & white images of my parents individually when they were young lads.  There's something mysterious about seeing them and knowing you weren't even a thought in their mind.  It's like back to the future.....kinda ; )  It's beautiful that an image on a piece of paper can evoke such strong emotions.   They can tell a story.  I guess I have to thank my mom for taking so many images of US when we were little, because I just adore looking at old photographs.  That's also the reason I love photography so much.  I hope my child, and also all of YOUR children will thank us all for taking these images!  Life is a perpetual cycle that can snowball so fast that we lose sight all around us.  So slow down....enjoy the small things.  Snap a photo, and store it with a smile.