You Matter

Decorative, not Empty

Suzie Bichovsky-Thomas • Jan 26, 2014
        I was gifted with a beautiful frame last year.  Gorgeous!  I knew right away that I wanted to put it in my home office for inspiration.  (Never mind that my home office is cluttered with things that need to find a home so that I can work in my home office and benefit from said inspiration.  Moving on!)
        What would I put in the frame?  Many applicants came to mind.
        Perhaps a photo from the zoo many years ago?  Our friends’ children changed from these little boys who crawled everywhere to stumbling about dressed like mini men.  The two boys with crooked smiles posed next to a gorilla statue- stuck between baby and boyhood, a beautiful reminder of our growing circle of friends.  
        Or, maybe, since I planned to do “my writing” in the office, something related to the craft should be in the frame.  I already had my favorite quote from a journal cover on display.  My favorite children’s book is on the desk.  ( Pollyanna is in my bedroom- a great attitude reminder for each morning.)  My desk is surrounded by floor to ceiling bookshelves containing some of my favorite friends, memories, and dreams.  I considered an autographed and zombified trading card of one of my favorite authors but then worried that seeing his rotting face everyday would be too much pressure.
        I poured through photos, narrowed them down to a few, and set the frame aside for a few days.  A few days turned into seven months.  There it sat.  Decorative but empty.  I woke up in the middle of the night and just knew The One!  I raced downstairs, leapt over cats, and pulled out the photo box.
        Once upon a time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was in college.  One weekend, a group of us from the dorm went to a quarry.  People were repelling from cliff to basin and others were jumping in.  So many great pictures that day!  The six of us posing in bathing suits and flannels; a friend conducting a symphony of ducks; my cast-wearing buddy swimming with me in the quarry after our long trek around to the “wimpy side” where we could safely slide in and worry about climbing out later; a fantastic shot taken by yours truly from the wimpy side of the most daring group member jumping some 40-ish feet into the quarry.  Great photos, great memories, but not the finalist.
        Wandering around a nearby park later that day, I took random photos WITH a camera (not a phone) WITHOUT a display screen (Forrest Gump should have said, “Life’s like a non-display screen camera, you never know what you’re gonna get.”).  I stumbled upon an elderly couple on a bench.  I could only see them from behind.  I wondered about them.  Who were they?  Were they happy?  Were they in love?  What’s their secret?  Something about them silently gazing at the canal called to me, so…I snapped a photo and ran.
        Looking at the photograph all those years ago for the first time, I knew I was looking at my future.  Even then, I could have given you a list of material things I wanted but I knew what I wanted most of all- someone to sit on a bench with when I was older.  Looking at the photograph again as it sits in the frame in my office, I’m reminded that it is more important to have a life filled with love and friendship than a life that is decorative and empty.
        Maybe I’ll go back to that park near a canal by a quarry one day and sit on that same bench.  I won’t be wearing a bathing suit with a flannel and my bench mate won’t be jumping 40-ish feet into the quarry this time if he knows what’s good for him.  Maybe, just maybe, someone will snap our picture from behind and wonder.  If asked, I would tell them the secret.
        It’s simply this…

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