Snapshots of Happiness

     It is more fun to go through old snapshots than clean out a garage.  Our garage holds strange and unfahomable tools and other things that Des was loathe to toss out.  This is the week we start the sorting with a handyman named Dana referred to me by  my Dr. Murphy who happens to be his brother.  I recommend either one whether you have pain in you joints or in your clutter.   But I digress.

    About snapshots, they  seem to multiply faster than ants at a picnic.   Boxes and albums abound.  I started to separate families into separate stacks so I can offer them for the taking,  when I noticed a common thread.  Des and I looked happy, smiling at the camera with eyes that smiled too.

   There we were at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, waiting our turn to go up to the top.  In another we wore bright orange life vests on a cruise to Alaska during a lesson on what to do if the ship goes down.  Titanic flashed across my mind,  but then I can get dramatic.
Again on the water, we are  headed down the Columbia River following the path of Lewis and Clark in a bright red paddle wheel vessel.  More water, riding on the Maid of the Mist in NiagaraFalls.  Did I mention I can't swim?

    A last on land, there I am sitting on a swing in the back yard of brother and sister-in-law Dick and Siby Shields while she hangs out the wash in a soft summer breeze in Ripley, New York.  Still life in motion. 

    All these lead me to start an album, pictures and narratives of our life,  lived with gratitude..    I've decided to highlight  grand travels to Paris as well as tedious road trips across the country, west to east and back again. 

   We got acquainted with our blended families through our travels. Wish I had a snapshot of Des surrounded by my noisy Italian family in the basement of a home in Chicago.  A comic strip would show him with a cloud above his head, asking 'what did I get into?' 

  On the other hand, I got up close and personal with a cow on Dick's farm, awed at how big they are, city slicker that I was.   Des and were extremes in our backgrounds.  He was the youngest of 7 children, I was an only child.   I never finished college, he earned a doctorate.  Still our values matched and do did our faith.  Love made it work,  warts and all.

So says Sassy