My son turned 18 at the weekend.
EIGHTEEN!
I honestly can’t believe I’m writing that.
Last week I told you about the book we were making for him. We asked his nearest and dearest, his day-one people, to write him a letter. Something he could keep forever.
Then we started gathering photographs.
Photos from every year of his life.
And wow. What a story they tell.
18 Years of Love
There is absolutely no denying that my son has had a wonderful childhood.
It has been full of play. Adventures. Holidays. Festivals. Family. Friends. Mud. Laughter. Probably quite a lot of chaos.
But more than anything, it has been full of love.
As I put the photographs together, that was the thing that struck me most.
This boy has been loved.
And I actually think that if he ever goes through a difficult time with his mental health, this book could become something incredibly important.
Because there it is, in black and white.
Page after page of people loving him.
A reminder that says: You matter. You belong. Look how loved you have always been.
Making It Has Been Emotional
I have cried making this book on an almost daily basis.
Sometimes happy tears.
Sometimes that strange ache you get when you realise your baby really isn’t a baby anymore.
And sometimes because I’ve found photographs of Ethan being cuddled, kissed and cherished by people who aren’t here anymore.
Those are the ones that really get me.
A photograph suddenly becomes so much more than a photograph when the person in it is gone.
It becomes a little piece of them that you still get to keep.
The 18-Page Book That Became 38
I started this project with a very organised vision.
One page for every year of Ethan’s life.
Eighteen years. Eighteen pages.
Perfect.
Except, of course, life doesn’t fit neatly onto 18 pages.
Some of the letters were too long. They needed more space.
Was I going to sacrifice the photographs?
Absolutely not. There were far too many good ones.
So I added more pages.
Then we decided Australia needed its own page. The kids are half Australian and they’ve been three times, so those memories deserved their own space.
There went my chronology!
Then our festival family needed a page.
And then more photographs started appearing.
Dan found an old phone.
My Dad found some early baby photographs.
Every time I thought the book was finished, somebody found another little treasure.
So our beautifully organised 18-page book…
…is now 38 pages long.
And I love it all the more for it.
But There Were Photographs Missing
This is the bit that really made me think.
There were photographs I desperately wanted to include that we simply couldn’t find.
I could picture them.
I knew they existed.
But where were they?
Some were probably sitting on old hard drives that no longer work. Others were on old phones or computers.
Some have simply disappeared into the digital abyss.
And that feels incredibly sad.
Because technology changes.
Phones break.
Hard drives fail.
Files get corrupted.
Cloud accounts get forgotten.
Digital photographs feel permanent because we can make thousands of them.
But they’re not.
The Photographs We Could Find
Do you know which photographs were easy to find?
The printed ones.
The albums.
The prints tucked safely away.
The photographs my Dad had kept.
The ones we could actually pick up and hold.
And after 18 years as a photographer, you’d think I wouldn’t need reminding of this.
But I did.
Don’t Just Take the Photos
So that is my message to you this week.
Take the photographs.
Take hundreds of them.
Photograph the big birthdays and the holidays, but photograph the ordinary stuff too.
The muddy knees.
The cuddles on the sofa.
The missing teeth.
The ridiculous haircuts.
The favourite teddy.
Grandad holding the baby.
The people you love laughing together.
But please don’t leave all of those memories sitting on your phone.
Print the photographs.
Make the albums.
Put pictures on your walls.
Give prints to grandparents.
Fill boxes with them.
And if you have digital photographs that really matter to you, back them up. Then back them up somewhere else too.
Because one day, sooner than you can possibly imagine, your baby might turn 18.
And you might find yourself sitting on the floor surrounded by photographs, crying your eyes out and wondering how on earth those years disappeared so quickly.
Those photographs won’t just show you what your child looked like.
They’ll tell the story of their life.
Show them where they came from.
Remind them of people they’ve lost.
And most importantly, they’ll show them just how very, very loved they have always been.
Don’t just take the photos. Print them.
One day, they might become some of the most precious things you own.
