My Turn: The delicious wait for photos from a 24-exposure roll

After waiting for about two weeks, the tiny yellow package finally arrived in the mail. You immediately opened that package without thinking about the other items, like bills from Macy’s or Con Edison. The pictures from vacation, the wedding, or simply of your baby’s first birthday had finally arrived.

Regardless of your religious affiliation or level of dedication, a tiny part of you always said a quick prayer, hoping the pictures “came out.” Unlike today’s smartphones or digital cameras that provide instant results (we had “Polaroids” back in the day), the contents of that yellow package didn’t come with a do-over. Sometimes the pictures might be blurry or appear as if taken on the sun’s surface. It was a shot in the dark, but there was always hope that this time would be different.

Taking pictures with film that required development came with risks the iPhone generation knows nothing about. We needed to be judicious with only 24 photos on a roll of film. Taking 20 pictures of the sunset or shots of your dinner every night just wasn’t possible.

Even armed with multiple rolls of film while on vacation, reaching the end of the current roll was nerve-wracking. The film needed to be carefully rewound into the canister before opening the back of the camera. One mistake, one false step, and all the pictures were gone.

Every family has a relative entrusted with taking pictures at events. That’s a lot of unseen and unspoken responsibilities. After all, returning to Lake George to retake a photo of Aunt Sadie and all your cousins wasn’t possible.

And now, in my possession, thanks to the U.S. Postal Service and the folks at Kodak, was a fistful of memories. With a massive smile, I would sometimes privately review them before alerting anyone else to their existence. There was Aunt Rita and her beehive hairdo. The pictures from inside the church were always a little dark, but there were Anthony and Marina right after the priest said, “You may now kiss the bride.” Oh, look, there’s a picture of little James trying to hold up that giant turkey leg from his first Thanksgiving!

The artist Joan Miró once said, “You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”

I pored over every one of those 24 pictures two and three times. Once my mother got hold of them, she immediately picked out ones to make copies, so we had to be careful with the negatives. Some photos made it onto the refrigerator, others into an album or memory box. I always marveled at my mother’s photo albums and her ability to recall a poignant story behind virtually every moment preserved in beautiful black and white.

Pictures tell a story, the historical record of our lives. A photograph is a vehicle to travel back in time with, recalling that exact moment, forever frozen in time.

Andy Warhol said it best: “The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”

Even if it came out a little blurry.

Paul DiSclafani

Massapequa