Memories

I had been meaning to sort out my treatment room for some time. At the back there is storage, which is dry and mouse and rat proof. For the last little while we have just been placing items there, willy nilly, cramping the space. I knew it was time to deal to it. But more importantly, I knew a box of old photos was stored there as well, and I had been wanting to go through it to see what was there.

Years ago, after I left my husband, he burnt most of my stuff, including some important photo albums I owned of my nursing and school years. However, a bundle of loose odds and sods had escaped the fire and these were what made up the contents of the box.

Many of the photos had deteriorated, especially some taken on my big OE, but others weren’t in too bad a condition. These photos were all taken before digital, when we recorded our happenings on a roll of film. One of the things I enjoy photographing most is shots of nature – sunsets, plants, beautiful lighting and I obviously did then too, as I had lots of failed photos that hadn’t turned out how I had envisaged they would. Digital is certainly a great advancement for photography, with one able to see the results instantly and not hope the desired photo is stored on the next roll of film to be developed.

I took photos of some of these photos and posted a few on Facebook. I thought people might be interested in seeing these treasures of the past. Four of them were of Sale Day, on the large sheep and beef station I was on before I left Paul in 1999, dating the photos to a year or two before this.

I had immediate responses. I remember…. Back then I was…

 I suddenly realised something I had not before and that is, that my memories were snapshots back in time. In my mind, the farm was and always will be, how I remember it when I left. A lot has happened both to the land and those people’s lives, since I was there, but my mind is set back in the 90s. To the people who still live there, these are distant memories of a time long gone. To me, that is how it still is.

I posted another photo, set either the late 70s or perhaps 1980. The situation is the same. My mind is set back at that period, while for others, these people have grown, had families, some have died, but they have memories of all those intervening years. I just hold the snapshot from the period I lived there.

I have shifted a lot and I hold memories of all the places I have lived, but things will have changed. I hadn’t realised that until I saw the comments from people viewing the photos. To them, they raised a time way back in the day. To me it was how it was and always will be.

While these were actual photos, I realise my mind is made up of snapshots too. I have brushed through many people’s lives. I associate these encounters with the places I lived, and in my head, these people are still the same age they were when I was there, they are still the same people, and everything is the same too. How wrong could I be.

NB: The pic is one of the few I have of myself, circa 1972