Carry This Picture.

Remember that scene in The Office, when Jim and Pam are getting married, and they talk about taking mental pictures to remember moments from their wedding day?




It's sweet when Pam initially brings up the idea in the above clip, but as the episode (and their wedding adventures) evolve, you realize the idea of mental pictures has real heart.  (I still get a little misty-eyed when I think of that scene where Jim cuts his tie so it matches her torn veil...and through her grateful tears Pam takes a mental picture.) 

I don't really remember the first time I consciously took a mental picture.  For a long time, any time I found myself without a camera and wanted to remember a moment or a scene, I'd whisper 'mind's eye' to myself, hoping to file away whatever was in front of me, as if my memory would serve as an actual file cabinet, ready for me to rifle through its papers and thoughts and photographs whenever I was so inclined.  Over the past year or so though I've found myself actually snapping mental images with my imaginary camera, just like they do in The Office.  It doesn't matter if I'm by myself or with a group of friends or riding my bike on a random weekend afternoon.  If there's a moment that strikes me, I'm inclined to snap.  (And I'm old enough to not care one bit if my faux camera snapping looks odd to any onlookers.)

Because look.  There's the mental picture I took of my friend's children in Jamaica, digging in the sand together at sunset.  Here's the one of my Mom, looking down at her dinner as she sat across from me one evening, slicing into her trout, telling me a story about the art class she'd taken.  There, look, there's the one I took of a tree bursting with neon green spring buds against a brilliant blue sky.  Here is my friend laughing at a joke I made, tossing her head so far back I can see one of the fillings among her teeth.  Oh, and there's my Dad, arranging the charcoal briquettes in a perfect pyramid as he gets ready to grill us steaks.  There's the full moon out my bedroom window, shining into my lovely little apartment as I crawl under my duvet. 

As silly as it may sound there's something that works about that physical snapping, of framing a shot with my hands.  It helps me to remember.  To remain aware.  Every day I'm learning something, discovering more about myself and this world I live in.  I certainly cannot claim to have it all figured out.  But I for sure know this: The little things ultimately become the big things. So I will gladly take these memories as I accumulate them, tuck my mental pictures away to pull out when I'm otherwise feeling glum.  And no one will ever be able to take them away from me, nor will I ever misplace them.  They are mine for the keeping, tucked away in a special corner of my heart.