flipflop_diva

Life can be measured in all sorts of ways — by days, by years, by degrees earned, by places lived, by kids had — but sometimes I think my life can be measured by photos of a group of people sitting on a staircase.

No one really knows how it started. “The kids” (as we will forever be known, even when we are ninety) were too little to remember, and “the parents” have long since forgotten. Maybe it was started by my father, who thinks that every minute without a photo is a minute wasted. Or maybe it was started by one of the mothers, who wanted to remember how cute her daughter looked all dressed in red and green and patent leather. Or maybe it was an accident, three little girls sitting on a staircase and a camera nearby happening to flash.

However it began, most every year of my life is marked in my mind by 10 children and 10 adults crammed onto a tiny staircase and smiling at a camera.

Somewhere in a guest room that is a little too messy, I have a scrapbook that is full of just those photos. They span more than twenty years. Flipping through that book is like watching time go by. Children get older, parents get grayer, but the smiles are always there, and the friendship is obvious. Arms wrapped around each other, heads pressed together. Sometimes someone is laughing, always someone isn’t paying attention.

Moments in time, captured forever.

Sometimes there is a missing person, a stair not filled. The year Jimmy couldn’t get off work, the year Darlene was sick, the year my mother passed away.

The pictures stopped around that time. Not just because of that, though carrying on a tradition is always harder when you know it’s forever changed. But also because we grew up. The kids. We scattered in all directions — to college, to jobs, to other parts of the country. My dad got remarried. He made new friends.

It’s harder for everyone to see each other now. It’s harder to keep in touch. Most of our communication comes from “likes” on a Facebook page, as if saying, “Hey, I’m still here somewhere!”

But sometimes it feels like a part of me is missing. Sometimes I look at a staircase and see shadows of the past.

This year, though, we’ve made a pledge. We’re all getting together in October. The parents, the kids and this time the grandchildren will be there — one four-year-old boy and three little girls who are still learning to walk and talk. We’re going to sit on a staircase, and we’re going to take a picture.

And maybe next year we’ll do it again. And then the year after that.

And maybe someday, twenty years from now, those three little girls and one little boy will also have a book of photos to look back on and remember and sometimes miss. And they, too, will mark the moments of their lives with every flip of a page.

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