Our family has never had a big screen. We watched movies on an Ipad, or laptop, and huddled close under a quilt. It's cozy. 

But the last time I visited our oldest son I witnessed the slide show that plays on his screen and was mesmerized. He noticed. Being always on the lookout for ways to make me smile he and John plotted to get one for us. It arrived last week in an enormous box, and John spent hours on the phone, schlepping to Home Depot, and wrestling wires. By the third day it was mounted above the fireplace. 

In between movies, which are less cuddly in that we can actually sit in different chairs, the slideshow plays a continuous stream of photographs. They move in that magical flip flop way, such that a picture of Lukas and Amy in New Zealand appears next to one of him ten years younger in Paris. The twins show up as Raggedy Ann and Andy next to an image of them shopping with their sisters for the wedding next fall. 

Time becomes of little consequence, as I behold the minute gaps separating decades. In a peripheral way I know that there were indeed heartaches jimmied inbetween the shots of our family at Christmas, on a sandy beach, breaking gluten free bread. But in the wider view of a thousand pictures, it is all good. 

One of the effects of an over arching sense of time is how the annoyances fade, while the joys reverberate. Heck, I can hardly remember a week after an argument what had me riled up, much less five years. Yet the sweetnesses, like the effort John made to bring these very memories into my daily routine, replay on a continuous loop. 

All it takes is for me to turn my attention.