Video Chats, a Royal Wedding, and Photos on the Fridge

My mom loved to take pictures. Whether there was an occasion or not, she always had her camera out and told us all to smile. If we didn’t smile, she’d complain that she wanted “nice pictures." A lot of them ended up on our fridge every year. But it wasn’t just us on the fridge. When Prince William got married to Catherine Middleton, my mom took pictures of their wedding ceremony on the TV screen and the next thing you know, the Prince is smiling from our fridge door next to those of us who are perhaps a bit less royal.

About 10 years ago I was doing a video chat with my parents. They were in Hawaii for their winter vacation and I was in New York City. When they were out there, we used to video chat quite regularly. That year in February, NYC was hit with a pretty big snowstorm and so I shared some pictures of the snow with them over iChat. There was this one picture of me standing on top of a snowbank and I noticed that my mom was taking photos of the screen.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I could just send her the photo, so I just let her continue. She must have snapped a dozen photos that I shared from my computer and although there was a screen in between us, I kind of felt special. Here I was in New York City and my mom was in Hawaii and she was taking photos of me in the snow. I don’t know if she ever got them printed, but the thought of my mom getting photos like these printed out at the drugstore and then having them end up on the fridge is about as endearing as it gets.