One of those places, one of those times

A silly, self indulgent post about the power of pictures, nostalgia, and the tricks of memory. As I was taking these (and many other pictures) of Dear Alex over the last weekend, I had this sudden, powerful sweeping sense of nostalgia for myself and an imagined Dear Alex of the future. I had this feeling that for whatever reason, this day, the moments of running in the sun by the old boat racks by the lake will be something that she'll half-remember, as I half remember things like this from my childhood - that sense of place and freedom and safety, turned loose by my parents to run harmlessly wild for a moment - that moment poised somewhere between toddler and child and kid. There's something powerfully timeless in this place - it's an everyplace that you can see in thousands of pictures of kids by the lake, an almost cultural universal. I was tempted to turn the pictures black and white, or give them a kodachrome fade to push the sense of instant history I felt when I was taking the pictures, but there's no need for affect - time itself will do that. This is not meant to be a depressing post about loss and nostalgia, but something about the universality of that feeling of wonder that we share with our children as they grow and (hopefully) remember how they got to be who they are.