Is It Wrong to Save Pictures of Another Man?

I was cleaning over the weekend and decided to focus most of my energy on the dust bunnies that have taken up residence in my bedroom. Because I had no intention of getting out of the house, I kept my pajamas on, hair pulled up, and left the contacts on the bathroom shelf. This may seem insignificant, but trust me... that last part is what sets up this story. I folded clothes and put up clothes, sorted papers into what's important and what's not important (until I need it later, of course), and made a pile of birthday cards, Christmas cards, and Mother's Day cards.

Yes, it's been a while since I cleaned.

I pulled boxes down from the top shelf to put away keepsakes and was looking at old pictures and graduation tassels and all those things that make up a life. These are the things that I have always pictured my grandchildren sorting through some day as they attempt to "figure the old woman out". There was a particular stash of photos (tied with a ribbon, of course) of the husband as he was when we first met. Young. Military. Hair. I smiled to myself as I thought of those memories and flipped through the pictures one by one and that's when I saw it. Well, that's when I saw him, to be more specific.

Another man.

I took off my glasses to get a better look. You see, a year or so ago I was advised by the eye doctor to get bifocals. I can't see anything far away. Zip. Zilch. Nothing but a blur. That's old news. I've been like that since the fourth grade. What is new, however, is this brutally, cruel inability to see anything close up. I will squint and stretch my arm out to no avail. If I have my contacts in, reading glasses- like the kind you find on the rack at Walmart, are required to make sense of what I'm looking at; if I have my regular glasses on with no contacts, I just take them off so I can see.

It is beyond irritating.

I am fairly certain that when this particular picture was so carefully and painstakingly tucked away into my special box of special memories, I had my contacts in. If you are keeping up with this rambling, then you understand that if I didn't have on reading glasses, my vision would have been fuzzy at best. Because I was now cleaning and reminiscing with my regular glasses on, I instantly knew that something was not right in my special world. I took my glasses off and peered closely at the picture of the fellow who was smiling at me.

Lord have mercy, that was not the husband.

The young man had dark hair and was dressed in an Army uniform, much like my own man would have been in our youth. It looked like him. Kinda. I laughed all the way across the house as I thrust the picture into the face of the husband and asked, "Who is this man and why am I keeping a picture of him?" His eyes flashed recognition in a matter of seconds as he rattled off his name and asked where in the world I had found it. I told him my story and we both came to the conclusion that at some point, it had to have fallen out of an album or something and from there... well, obviously I mistook the fellow for the husband and lovingly placed him in my ribbon-tied stash.

A long story, I know, and probably one of those that just isn't funny if you're not the one in it. Nevertheless, I tend to find meaning in everything and my take from this story was two-fold:

A). Maybe bifocals aren't the devil, and
B). This is how family tales get started.

If, in fact, my future grandchildren were trying to figure me out long after I'm gone, can you imagine the stories that would have unfolded due to the discovery of grandma's mystery man? I suppose it would have spiced up a rather ordinary life.



*Dedicated to my own grandma, no mystery man in her life,
 but two good men who loved her. Gone from this world nine years today.

My Brain Is Tired

I have a hard time with what should be the simplest of decisions. Some things I am quick to act on and strangely enough, those are usually the life-altering kind of decisions. Other things I tend to camp out on for a long time. Those are the types of things that really don't matter in the long run.

Case in point: a new cell phone.

My current phone has featured a cracked screen for well over a year now. It's a lovely kind of crack, the kind that starts in one corner and spider-webs out across the screen. I've lived with it because (1) the phone is paid for and (2) I really don't care. It hasn't bothered me too terribly much. I can see what I need to see and if I'm watching a video or looking at a picture, I can flip the phone to where the crack is least intrusive.

Sounds dumb even as I write it.

A few weeks ago, however, I discovered a word search game that has successfully changed my mind on how I cope with a cracked screen. What once was not so much a bother is now very much a bother. Q's look like D's and E's might be C's. When I mentioned to the family that this could be very well be the last straw and it was time for a new phone, they looked at me like I was crazy. Really? This is what does it?

Yes. Forget the fact that the phone shuts off randomly for no reason and has crashed at least once and freezes up at the most inopportune times. I really didn't care.

But now, oddly enough, I do care.

So I have spent the last two weeks researching and reviewing and rechecking the budget to see what I can afford. I won't get locked into another contract and I won't be paying monthly payments and/or interest. Needless to say, regardless of what carrier or what brand, the options become severely limited. You would think my selection would have been pretty quick.

Not a chance.

I have made up my mind and changed my mind. I sought the advice of a son and the wisdom of a daughter. When the husband was asked, his simple reply was always You know what the checkbook looks like, which translates to Don't bother me with whatever you are going to do anyway.

Truth.

So, in the end, after adding to the virtual cart and removing from the virtual cart at least three days in a row, it was the daily walk to the mailbox that won me over. I told myself that I was wasting time, that there were word games to play, and that I would not rest easy tomorrow if I did not go for what I could afford today. Five minutes later, the transaction was complete.

What I decided on is not the moral or point of the story here. It's the fact that I struggled over the decision for so long. What was black and white became very fuzzy as I tried to unscramble all the reasonings and motivations in my mind and then put them back together... and in the end, the result was just as I knew it would be in the very beginning. I complicated what should have been very simple.

We humans are very good at that.

I don't make resolutions for the new year, but if I were to try to improve on something this year, it would be that I don't use up so much precious time on the smallest of details. It may or may not work, but shaving off a few days here and there could very well add a few days to my life.

Decisions exhaust me.

Heath & Angel

For a short time, a very short time, I was known as the second half to Heath and Angel. We dated for two weeks when I knew I was in love with him (kept that part to myself) and when he gave me a card a few weeks later that said he loved me, I asked him to marry me. No sense burning daylight, as my grandma would say. We married a few months after that and by the time the anniversary of that impromptu marriage proposal had rolled around, our firstborn had joined us. From that point on, we were simply Mom and Dad.

A little over a week ago, our second child (of three) left the proverbial nest to live on his own. We talked about how we had went from just the two of us to a family of three, then four, then five; and how it now seems we are living life in reverse... from five to four to three. Our youngest plans to stay with us through college, but we are both aware of how quickly those college years will fly.

Soon it will be back down to two.

I know we don't have as many kids as some or lack in what others would consider a remarkable story, but then again, I consider our story quite remarkable. When I was twenty-two, I fell head-over-heels in love with a fella who made me laugh. A few days ago, he still had me laughing on my forty-sixth birthday. We'll always be Mom and Dad in our little corner of the world, but it kinda feels like we're getting back to Heath and Angel and that, as corny as it may sound, makes me grin from ear to ear. Might as well enjoy it before we get to the "grand" part of the names.

I love these seasons of life.