by Judy Coccaro, Trailside Creative Writer’s Group Member

Years ago, when my grandchildren were very young, I used to try and get them to stay at my house for a day or two at a time. They lived in Midland even then and we lived in Lakeview so Mommy and Daddy were quite a ways away. We usually had something going on for them to participate in like a play at the school, or music in the park, or me playing the pump organ with another couple at a park somewhere where there were things for them to play on like swings, teeter-totters, etc.

We usually made sure there was something special going on for them and included them in the things we did. We also had a pool at our house and when they were young, it took both my husband and me to spend time in the water with them. Otherwise, the pool was off limits.

Sometimes we would just go for a walk. The neighbor lady had built a gnome house in a tree in her yard with little windows, steps up to the door, flowers in the boxes under the little windows, and a little chimney up higher in the tree.

The neighborhood was just filled with fun things like that.

What I did whenever we went for walks (and later bike rides) was to always take a camera with me and take lots of pictures. Sometimes I let the children take pictures of what they saw. We’d end up with pictures of the sky, trees, and when they were very small, we’d have pictures of adult knees when they took pictures of us.

I had a program on my computer at that time that allowed me to print the pictures from my phone and sometime over the weekend, I would put them in an “album.” That album often consisted of a construction paper cover and plain computer paper pages with explanations of each of the pictures to record what we did over the weekend or the time the girls stayed with us. That album was then given to Mommy and Daddy at the end of each visit so they would know what we did during their visit.

I never thought much about those elementary school type albums but when the girls graduated from high school and they displayed all their school accomplishments, diplomas, and rewards, there among those treasures were the little albums I made for them and their parents many years before. I don’t know if the original purpose of those memories meant more to them or to me because they saved them and put them with other treasures, but I will say that small deed of taking and mounting those pictures sure caused some “warm fuzzies” for me as well.