Harbingers of new life, the tiny tree frogs speak of spring, their songs promises there will be sunshine on my windowsill, and too, that the warm summer rain will wash the cobwebs away.

Thunder growls, ominous and low, stealing this rainbow thought. I have work to do, but I gaze outside, where the real world is, and realize that my life has gone by the wayside of mistakes and regret -- wasted with longing for things unattainable, and daydreams that will never come along. My breath slowly escapes in a sigh of resignation, and I pull another box from the musty closet. One photo at a time ... one dagger in my heart at a time, I begin to sort my memories.


There is a small dog that was a foundling. I cannot name her, for she was swiftly given away, not one to be kept because there was little money for someone else's problem. She looks at the camera, content, not knowing she will not be able to stay where it is safe.

I discover photos of my friends from art school. There's Brian, his fiery red hair blazing underneath the hot lights of the classroom. He's giving me a peace sign. He told me that day he would be traveling to Italy, where he was to study the masters. And I look into his young eyes and wish him all the luck in the world.

My mom trudges along, a milk-jug in hand, going out to feed the cats. She had tried to avoid my camera that day. "I don't need my picture taken, Susie." So I waited until she glanced away ... click. I had the hard working farm wife immortalized for as long as a picture lasts. I stare, as if trying to memorize that moment, at the woman walking to the old barn, but all I see is a silver casket, and I begin to sob.

There's Rusty, my beloved horse, and best friend, lying cold. His skull cracked open like an egg with no yolk. I grow weak with the memory of that day. I hear the jet coming out of nowhere. I hear the sonic boom that was so loud, it was as if a bomb had dropped on Baker Hill Road. I let the photo slide from my hands, wishing, praying I were the one in the cold, dark earth. Only the good die young. I will live in misery for a very long time.

My baby son smiles up at me, twenty-two years ago. My tears fall like rain on his tiny parade, and I am sorry. I'm sorry, Sam, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for letting you down. I hold the photo to my heart and like a surgeon's scalpel, the love slices and stings my chest.

This date says 1977. My father and brother stand in front of his welding machine. Another moment caught unaware. My dad really was a jack of all trades. Teacher, farmer, electrician, plumber, carpenter, hunter -- always working, he did his best for us. Honest as the day is long, my dad was a good egg, and I miss him so.

I force a smile, as I smell the purple and white lilacs captured so beautifully by Mom's Brownie, all those years ago. I am taken back to the magical spot beneath their shady limbs, where the kittens kept me company. Where the ladybugs tickled my toes. And the world was forced to leave me alone.

Who will ever know I was here? Or why, when all that will be left in the end are faded photographs, and memories that no one can possibly care about? Each of us is naught but a will-o-the-wisp, bobbing along in the dark, teasing reality, taunting the truth, and finally, slowly but surely, burning out.

I sift through the dozens of Kodak memories -- pets, horses, family and friends long gone. I search for something. Something I've never had. Someone, I've never known. Maybe someone yet to be.

The boxes hold snapshots of moments in time, moments in a life thrown to the wind. Thrown away on emptiness, and a forlorn sense of misgiving and mistrust. I've been to the dark side of the moon -- laughed beneath the sun, yet, the pictures tell the tale of a life that was surely never meant to be. I see it in my eyes. In every stolen moment, the longing is there ... and the camera does not lie.