Evidently, I blinked.
It wasn’t
all that long ago that my wife called me in the middle of a workday afternoon,
telling me she was taking our children to get a few pumpkins. Drop by around
5:30, she said. Kleathers was the only place in town to get them back then.
It was
1995, and we had just moved into our new offices at the corner of Main Street
and Sycamore Creek Drive. Just the Friday before, we had gone to Springboro’s
varsity football game, back when the Panthers still played at Ralph Wade field.
St. 741
was a two-lane road. Charlie Reedy was still a member of the Springboro Police
Department.
Did I
know how quickly things would change? Do we ever know?
My
stepson Adam was anxiously awaiting his first year of football. He was only
eight then. When he did finally get a uniform, he wore his helmet the whole way
on the car ride home. He must’ve thought there would be blitzing linebackers on
the street that night.
My
daughter Chloe didn’t even know how to talk, or shop or send text-messages
constantly or tell me what shoes are perfect for a particular shirt.
I took my camera
because she had a little pumpkin head, perfect for the pumpkin patch. My wife found
a little hat that made her look like a French pastry chef. Everyone made a huge fuss over how cute she
looked.
Click.
Click.
There
was no such thing as a digital camera back then, at least not for me anyway. I
had to find the right kind of film, then set the aperture and the film speed
just the way my friend Ron Alvey (a Dayton Daily photographer) always showed
me. The fact the sun was hiding behind the clouds actually heightened the
effect.
Midway
through our time there, my beeper went off. Remember beepers? I’d never had one
before – who did? – and I had to go back to the car to call a client from my
car phone. Yeah, that’s right. No one had a mobile cell phone, either.
Such
primitive days.
We found
our pumpkins. We paid the five bucks for both of them, and got ready to leave.
But then one more photo idea came to mind. Hey Adam, I said, prop Chloe up and
lay down beside her.
I’ll be
darned. Sometimes things turn out the way you plan them. I knew the moment I
pressed the shutter it was about the best photograph I would ever take in my
life.
A moment
of magic caught on film.
It hangs
on my office wall, and I studied it the other day. I couldn’t help but consider
how much change had come so quickly.
We had
no home computer then. There was no way to download the photos so I could email
them to friends and family all across the country – within seconds, as we do
now. Teenagers actually talked to one another in person as opposed to through
their phones.
Blink.
Now Adam
is in college and has a steady girlfriend. I remember when he hated girls.
Chloe is
a high school freshman and has plans to one day be a teacher. Or a designer of
some sort. Maybe even a photographer.
I can’t
help but wonder what’s store in another 14 years. They’ll both be married, with
children of their own, and Kim and I will follow them on one of their trips to
Kleathers to pick out some good pumpkins.
Click.
Blink. Those photos will be in California within the hour. God only knows what
other advances will be in store by then.
I just
had a horrible thought. Of a comment made by one of the little ones.
“Hey,
Adam, why don’t you prop Grandpa up in the middle of the pumpkins so we can
take his picture?”
Oh,
brother. Sometime, change isn’t good.