Unchained Memories

I've been helping my parents put together invitations for their 50th wedding anniversary. They were married on Christmas Day in 1955.

I have a batch of slides from their wedding day on my dining room table, and was waiting for the spare time to examine each slide for the one that struck me as being the one perfect to place on the anniversary invitation. Each precious slide is carefully numbered and dated by my father. Each slide with the same handwriting written with the same ink pen documenting the event and capturing a moment of time never to be experienced again. Most of the edges of each slide have turned an antique brown color, but the slide pictures themselves are still as vivid today as the day the picture was taken. How can that be? after 50 years of marriage? The color is so bright and beautiful...almost as beautiful as their 50 year marriage.

Keep in mind that I'd seen these slides many times before(as the youngest in a family of four kids) when my dad would regularly get out the slide projector and show pictures on the pull down screen in the den. The slides he would show were mostly from a time I never knew, but only could imagine about. Many a night my parents would point out people in these slides I never knew, places they had lived and places they had visited. Oh, there were pictures of Niagara Falls, Alaska, Maine, South America, numerous Catholic landmarks, churches, First Holy Communions of my sisters, deceased aunts and uncles, divorced friends, military moves, baby pics and on and on. But none of the 1000's of slides that my dad maintains to this day can ever compare to mom and dad's wedding slides.

Why? My mom was a princess in the most beautiful dress in the world (hand-made by her mom-in-law). The yards and yards of heavy satin flowed into a gorgeous train. The lace. The crown, you know the whole nine yards. It was beautiful. My dad, so handsome in his black and white tux. He looked a bit like Elvis with his perfectly combed hair and his crisp white cuffs. The bridesmaid dresses were of a mauve color and mom's attendants wore long gloves and held prayer books and rosaries. Things were simpler then, purer and maybe a bit magical to a young girl. It captured my young imagination years ago and still moves me as a woman today. But somehow, in viewing these slides today, I feel a sense of loss; that I've missed something along the way; something that MY generation does not have. What could it be?

Images are very influential on young minds. Subliminally, these images of my parents' past formed my worldview, my opinions, my expectations for my future, my dreams and my hopes. But most importantly those slides were evidence that LOVE was real..marriage was good and that love can LAST. Those slides, more than any other influence in my young life, told me that married life is a dance...a beautiful dance. These images helped to form in me a firm foundation from which to build my family, my marriage, and my faith. Not everything is or will be perfect in life, but that is all part of the dance.

I hope you dance in your marriage like my parents have and never give up on love.