Monday, December 20, 2010

The Best Gift I Ever Gave


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The best gift I ever gave was mostly stolen.

Well, it was sort of stolen. I did steal the box of old photographs from my mom's house. I did, but I bought the photo albums.

My parents would never have even noticed the box was missing. When I got married in 1999 and my mom developed pictures from my wedding shower there were photographs on that same roll of film from my brother's prom in 1994.

This was back before digital cameras were reasonably priced.



What I did for evenings over the next five weeks was sort through 30 years of photographs. I picked out the best ones and put them in chronological order. Then I took forty or so pictures from my own collection and I added them at the end.

The box of pictures was just this thing that sat up overflowing on a shelf. I was the only one that ever really looked at it.

But that Christmas I gave my mom two and a half photo albums filled with memories starting from her childhood and ending with her first grandchild.

The whole family spent hours together looking at the pictures.

It was magical.

And now my parents can keep them out and look at them anytime.

They could also throw away that old box.

It was the best present I have ever given anybody - I mean, not including the time I gave four people twin grandbabies all at the same time. They seemed to really like that too.

I'm sure if you asked my mother she would tell you that she liked the twins better, but (and don't tell her this) I made them for me. The photo albums, I made those for my parents.




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