Worth a Thousand Words

I have hit the jackpot.

I recently borrowed my mother's family photo albums so that I can make copies of some of the pictures of myself as a child to keep in an album for Ainsley. The reasoning behind this is morbid, but simple: in the event something happens to me, I want it to be easy for my survivors to put together photos for the ubiquitous montage. This is what happens when I go to a young person's funeral as I did earlier this school year; my mind turns with the details of the big "What if."

These albums have been a bigger treasure trove than I thought. I've found pictures that I completely forgot about from my childhood. Including a lot of pictures that must have been in my subconscious as I've been writing blog entries; the pictures sum up the childhood remembrances I've been writing about perfectly.

So over the coming months, I will be adding pictures to some posts I've already done, and using the pictures as inspiration for future writings. When I add a photo, I'll bump it to the top. This means a lot of the very grim Christmas entries will be re-posted, but with cute pictures, if that helps. I look very happy in all my family photos, and you can't tell that anything was amiss. I guess that's a big clue for when I wonder how I turned out mostly okay despite a childhood that was sometimes a horror story; I was, underneath it all, a resilient, hopeful little kid.

I'm also going to tell the tale of some mostly happier Christmases, the Christmases in the past ten years when I've been the mom to the best daughter in the world.

Happy holidays, everyone, and keep checking back. The pictures are worth a thousand words.