Old Photos, Great Memories

It's been almost 8 years since we moved from Los Angeles to San Diego. Because of limited space, we stored numerous boxes in my mom's garagae in Los Angeles. She's trying to clean her garage now, so I have taken the boxes, one by one over the past month, gone through them and eliminated what I could, then organized the rest and repacked the stuff in boxes that are now in my garage. In the process, I have looked at hundreds of photos of friends and family from the past 40 years, and have had a beautiful trip down memory lane.

There is nothing like old photos to make you feel OLD! I look at pictures of myself and Ron with the kids when they were small and say to myself, "Were we ever that young? Were we ever that thin?" I lingered over several groups of photos longer than others.

For Ron's 50th birthday party we had a huge 60's bash at the Friar's Club in Beverly Hills. We took over the whole place. Everyone was dressed in 60's garb, popular food from the 60's was served and we had a DJ and dancing all night. It was so much fun. The most nostalgic part of looking at the pictures was that many of the people in them have died or we're no longer in contact with. It's amazing, the power of a photograph. You can really relive the memory from a snapshot.

Another group of pictures that I reminisced over were the ones I took at Ron's 60th birthday party. This was the last party we had in our house in Brentwood, just a few months before we moved out. That was a difficult party and one we debated over whether or not to even have, but in the end decided to go forward with. It was in 2002, when all of our problems were coming to a head. All of Ron's clients, friends and family were there, but sadly most of the people present are no longer people we see. Several have died, others no longer talk to us. Still, the pictures keep the event alive forever.

Many of the pictures that I loved looking at were ones we'd taken from many trips to Europe, some alone, some with friends and some with the family. One picture made me laugh out loud when I remembered the story that went with it. The picure is of Ron, my 16 year old son Phil and his 16 year old cousin Mike, lying on lounge chairs on the beach in Cannes. They're grinning from ear to ear. Why? A group of young ladies, topless had just walked by. I just laughed when I remembered that afternoon. Right after I snapped the picture, the boys got up and followed the topless girls down the beach, trying to be discreet, but doing their best to get another look. What fun that afternoon was, and what great memories I have from that vacation.

All the pictures are back in a big plastic bag again, just a little smaller bag than before. I don't know if I'll ever get around to organizing them into albums. I doubt it. Today it is so much easier to keep photos arranged and easily available for viewing with the computer. I'd love to have a slide show of some of the old pictures. However, there is something I love about going through the old photos one by one, touching them and remembering when the picture was taken. It brings it all to life for me. What wonderful memories.