
Boy in a Box
I have mixed feelings about photos. When I worked as a hospice nurse, I used the pictures that people displayed in their homes as conversation starters. It was a good way to learn more about the people I was caring for.
I enjoy looking at photos of my own family once in a while, but I don’t really like to see the same image, whether it be art or photo, day after day after day. It’s too static. I do like the digital photo frames that have a variety of pictures on a reoccurring loop. I may get my favorite photos on one of those someday.
Recently, my youngest son gave back to me all his childhood photos. He didn’t want to take them to college. I used the opportunity to go through them and discard poor quality pictures and duplicates. The stack of keepers was one-third the size of the stack of discards.
Photos are a kind of clutter that is hard to resist. There is a historical quality to them, and once lost, can not be replaced like a sofa or a corkscrew. That said, it was easy to discard photos that were blurry, or that recall sad or bitter memories.