Landmarking with a Collage Frame

Well I just finished assembling a collage frame for Karen. This is the infamous collage frame.

Back in the good old early post-highschool days/university college days I made collage frames for all my friends. I filled them with pictures of our adventures together. I also put some kind of poem in the frame which represented what we had been through together.

Karen got hers in 1998. She never hung it up because she needed her Dad to put the nail in the wall since her walls were difficult to put nails into. Well her Dad never did put it up so when they moved the frame got packed away somewhere.

Once in the new house Karen and I searched for the frame but to no avail. It could not be found. We even got her Dad to look. He swore he knew exactly where it was but when we looked the frame was not there.

So passes three years and the frame has been forgotten. Cue another move to another house. The frame is again brought to the surface of our memories but by this point we figure it is LONG gone. We have no idea as to what it's fate was but we figure it MUST be permenantly hidden.

So one day a couple months ago Karen's Dad stumbled across said frame. It was a funny to see what pictures were in the frame. It was like looking at another lifetime that you were never part of.

The people in those pictures were different people. People unburdened with the unfairness of life. People who had hope of great things for themselves and for the world around them. I can't help but see that a lot of that is gone now.

Life has this way of turning the tables on you right when you get comfortable. We all definitely look comfortable.

I don't think that when I put the frame together originally that I ever considered how things would change or if I even had any comprehension of what could change. I look at the pictures I just put into that frame and wonder what it will look like 10 years from now.

Have we gotten wiser? I don't know. I feel like we are all still struggling to find our direction and our footing. Or maybe it's just me and I'm projecting all that on everyone else. Maybe I'm the only one who hasn't found that yet.

The changes keep rolling over us but I feel untouched.