Grins

I have, until now, neglected to add the little round image that is meant to represent myself on the computer. For some reason I suddenly felt the need to add one. I usually resist such temptation but this time I gave in. I knew instinctively what picture to add. The problem was, I could not remember where in tens of thousands of pictures it resides.

First, I began to search the most obvious place, the MacBook Air. This skinny little computer has been a trusted companion for almost a decade. We have had our ups and downs. It has played me dirt on several occasions, and caused me pain and sleepless nights, but overall it has been a useful tool.

I have written thousands of words, stored thousands of photographs. It has kept me entertained, and it has worked its little processor off navigating Carrie Rose from Chicago to Maine. More importantly, it has allowed me to keep connected with friends and family.

And I suppose I’d be bereft if I did not mention how with a few clicks of the keyboard it has helped me stimulate our consumer economy. That said I was looking for the image that I could see in my minds eye.

This brings me back to one of the “downs” we have experienced. On a rudimentary level I understand how this chuck of aluminum and plastic works but more on the hardware side. When I see computer code my eyes glass over and my mind goes blank. I spent my career dealing with flesh and blood not a digital representation of it.

So, when the computer decides to fail drastically I reach out for help since I cannot drive to Clark and Devon Hardware to search for a part. On several occasions, the hard drive has stopped recognizing my existence, and a dear friend who is wise to the world of bits and bites has rescued the data.

I am grateful for this even if at the time I was intolerable. One of the complications was that the individual files that separate the photos into useable/searchable data were lost. This left more than 80,000 photos with no rhyme or reason other than for dates, the mass of images became an integrated whole with no definition.

As I stated above, I knew the image but where could it be. To make matters worse about 2/3’s of the photos are on an old MacBook Pro. The search on the Air proved fruitless. It was time to turn on the Pro. The Pro has a quiet life. It lives on the bottom shelf of the printer stand perpetually plugged into its power source. In the past, despite the neglect it has always booted up though I live in fear that one day it will not.

The Pro is more than twice the size of the Air. Its screen is cinematic. I push the button that sits flush in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard, and the hard drive began to spin and make odd clucking sounds. The screen lite up displaying a picture of the Amtrak Bridge that blocks the path of the South Branch of the Chicago River.

I clicked on the iPhoto icon and the disc’s RPM immediately increased. This is not the instantaneous process I am used to on the Air. This process requires patience, and a bit of faith that in the end the program, with its treasure trove of 60,000 photos, will open and allow entry.

This time it went well, and before I knew it, I was reliving my life. It is not that I forgot my purpose but that I became immersed in how blessed a life I have had. As I searched the photographs, faces, countries, boats, all the experiences of decades came flooding back. I luxuriated in the images.

Did I find the picture I was looking for, I did. It is of my smiling mother and her cubby boy, hair cropped short in a photo booth. And the cubby boy seems equally as happy to be there, wherever there happened to be.

Like I said, I am not sure why this image called out to me but each time, when I have to enter my password to allow the computer to let me in, I grin and maybe on occasion tear up just a bit with the memories of time gone by.

April 2020