Adding pictures to our photo stream is easy. My son taught me how to edit them for best advantage, because the way they are displayed on our big screen is in a cascade format. Which means each photo is square. Which means if the photographer was trying to take a shot of the whole person they end up decapitated. 

But by cropping the original photo, I can zoom in on my favorite part and leave out the extraneous background, and unnecessary legginess. 

This can involve compromise. If the picture is horizontal, and includes five people, I can trim off the one to the far left, no slight intended, such that the group of four all fits in the frame. It also makes it possible to zoom into faces that have been diluted by a landscape of trees. Unless I want to see the background which also happens to include Stonehenge, or the Louvre. Because that is part of the story too. 

There are other options at my fingertips as well. I can play with the lighting, saturation of color, even switch to black and white. 

Watching the pictures flip by feels like skipping the beets and eating just the banana cream pie. The memories are all sweet, because who takes pictures of arguments? 

I notice that I can crop my picture of real life too. Shave off the details about the pre departure stress, with yelling around the edges, and just save the smiling daughter about to board the plane. I can whittle off the annoyance that I had to remind kids to do chores about ninety times and focus on the pleasure of a clean kitchen. Overlook the annoying habits of my partner and keep my eyes on his willingness to overlook mine.