March 19: Why I Believe In Love by Delores Fossen

In December, I found a box of old photos at the bottom of some seldom-used Christmas decorations. The photo box had likely been in our former living room when the decorations were being packed away, and someone had mistakenly shoved it in with the Christmas stuff.

The photos were all rejects.

You know which ones I mean. The good shots had long ago been culled out and placed in albums for everyone to see. These were the photos that hadn't quite made the grade, but they were suddenly very precious because we'd lost all our family albums during Katrina. The Christmas decorations had been in the attic during the hurricane and had survived, thankfully, and I thought all my photos were lost until I found this stash.

It was far better than finding gold.

Many of the photos were out of focus and the lighting was off, but as I went through each one, I saw them for the miracles that they are. Yes, I know that sounds corny, but it's how I felt.

All the shots were taken in the late ‘80s, two decades ago when my children were still in the rug-rat stage. Before finding the photos, if you had asked me about that year, I would have told you how hard it was. I was a stay-at-home mom with three kids, one of them autistic, and all under the age of five. My husband was an Air Force captain, and since I wasn't working, money was tight. In addition, he was working a sixty-hour week, and that meant I was home a lot with three rowdy kids. Added to that, we were on an assignment that I hated and were living in an old base house that was beyond depressing. Those were my memories of that year-the stress, the lack of sleep, the isolation.

And then I found those pictures.

That year was all there in the photos. The non-posed shots where someone blinked. Or cried. Or got too antsy before the picture was snapped. I saw the smiles that hadn't been coaxed, the happiness that couldn't be hidden, and the precious ordinary moments we shared as a family.

In that box, there was a picture of my daughter's first birthday. No, this wasn't a shot of the birthday cake and presents; those had gone into one of the lost albums. In this picture, she was walking out to greet her dad who was coming home early from work so we could celebrate her birthday. There was another shot of my sons wrestling on the floor-a rare moment indeed since my autistic son rarely joined the roughhouse play. Yet, there he was smiling-another rarity.

I believed in love before I found the photos. I believe in love every time I kiss my husband or hug my kids. But in those images from two decades ago, I saw the love. My daughter's smile. My sons' playfulness. My exhausted husband who still found the energy to listen to every little detail that the kids wanted to tell him about their day, and then he would listen to me. All of that's captured in the images.

The love had always been there, of course, but I'd never felt it that strong and had never seen it as clearly as I did in those imperfect pictures. Of course, I boo-hoo'ed all over the place, and my kids, who are now in college, couldn't understand my reaction and mumbled something about mom being hormonal. That's okay. One day, they'll get it. One day, they'll see photos of their own families and will understand.

So, that's why I believe in love.

Because I found some old photos stuffed in a Payless shoe box, and they reminded me that love isn't a place, or the stuff, or even the lack of stuff. It's not just the good, nor the bad. It's the people. It's my family.

I'd like to share one of those fuzzy photos with you. It's that shot of my daughter taken on her first birthday, before the party, before the cake, before the presents. It captures an ordinary moment of our ordinary family, and I'm so blessed to have had thousands of those precious ordinary moments. No, you won't feel the love that I feel when I look at it, but maybe it'll send you running to search through your own photos of those you love.

October 1988

So what about you-do you have a favorite photo that makes you remember just how special love is? If so, I'd like to hear about it.

About Delores Fossen:

Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate, and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why Delores, a Texan and former Air Force captain, feels as if she were genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an Air Force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.