Folklore is full of stories about “the fish that got away”. In these stories a fisherman describes a fish that he wasn’t able to catch, and the fish gets bigger and bigger every time the story is told.

Well, I don’t have stories about fish, but as a grandparent I have plenty of regrets about  pictures that got away… pictures that get more beautiful every time I remember them.

Here’s a recent one from when I went to visit my daughter Elizabeth’s family. I looked into the nursery and all four of her children were having a moment: Hanah and Aria seated in the big rocking chair by the window looking at a book, Elijah bending over the right arm of the rocker, talking seriously to the two in the chair, and on the other side of the rocker one-year-old Isla, the baby, chortling with triumph at being included, and sunlight through the window shining on all four blonde heads.

Priceless.

Or the time I saw my daughter Shannon’s child, two-year-old Lucas, follow the waving tail of the family dog into Shannon’s prairie garden.  The dog and the boy, standing there, still for one moment in time, looking up at the flowers, the blossoms higher than Lucas’ head. For one golden second, before the picture dispersed, each of them running to separate parts of the yard.

But of course, I didn’t have my phone with me, either time. So, I took a picture of the scenes in my mind, carefully placing them in the gallery of other photos I wish I could’ve taken.

Actually, I really don’t mind not taking those pictures, because they live on, in my mind. Instead of being stuck in a drawer or buried in the 18,000 photos already on my phone, the pictures have their own kind of immortality.

They brought me joy in the moment, when I first saw them. They brought joy as I carefully placed them in my mental photo album and still give me joy every time I remember them.

I’ve decided to pay more attention to that mental photo gallery of pictures that give me delight.

For there is another mental photo gallery that I waste entirely too much time in. Memories of embarrassing mistakes from 60 years ago.  Times I hurt people. Things I could have done differently. Things I should have done but didn’t. Actions I did carelessly that ended up being cruel… All of those photos have dark backgrounds, and they do not bring me joy.

I’ve decided that the next time I find myself in that dark gallery, looking at one of those painful pictures, I will take it off the wall and study it.  Just once.

I will ask myself, what can I learn from it? How can I act differently now? What could I do instead, in the future? And then I’m going to release the picture with a prayer.  Sometimes a prayer asking God to help me remember to do better next time. Most of the times, however, a prayer of forgiveness for myself. Then, I will let go of the picture and let it fade into nothingness.

One of my most pervasive character defects is a false assumption that I can be perfect if I try hard enough.  That is behind a lot of those dark pictures in my mind.  I need to replace that illusion with the truth. I need to remember that I am gloriously human, which means I will never be perfect, never do things perfectly, and never have a perfect life.  Every day of my life I am guaranteed to be making mistakes and every day of my life I’ll be certain to mess something up.

I want to accept all my imperfections, forgive myself and walk away from that dark gallery.

I want to spend more time in my joy-filled mental photo gallery, to which I’ve added more pictures from this past weekend with family.

Joining my grandchildren in a dance on our deck, in the rain.

Hearing two-year-old Lucas saying “Up!  Up!” and wanting me to play with him.

Pretending to chase four-year-old Aria and six-year-old Elijah around my back yard and watching them race past me and laugh triumphantly every time I fail to catch them.

I want to put these new memories alongside the old memories that still give me joy.

Sunshine coming through the window and lighting up four little blonde heads, a story of a private moment of intimacy between four children who love each other.

A  two-year-old boy running across the green grass in the sunlight, running and running and running, for the pure joy of it, as fast as his little legs will take him.