There was a big box of family photographs that my mother kept on a top shelf in her closet for years. It was rectangular, with a lid that popped off the top easily so that she could add to the pile inside it. She left it that way for years. And years. Open, drop in, close. And done.

Then came that Mother’s Day when I organized the photographs for her. I bought a massive album and lots of photograph holder corners, old-style, lick and stick. I arranged the photographs in chronological order as best I could across the floor. And that is when it dawned on me: there is a gap.

A missing portion of my childhood. It just isn’t there. The gap between early childhood and adolescence, as if it didn’t happen. The gap between my father’s death, and when we kids were old enough to photograph with our pocket-sized 110 film cameras.

Memories of my father have faded like the velvet sofa that sits too long in the window’s sunshine. I sit here, in my home, with my husband and children by my side. I am here, today. Everyday. Present. I see my children for the little people they are. Devoted favorite colors that have not budged once. Organization, and disarray. They are at the age of the missing photographs of my youth, representing the time right after my father’s death.

The days pass quickly, and I take it all in. Childhood is fleeting, and I get to experience it all over again. The wonderment, the skinned knees, the giggles, and the in-between. I feel that excitement in holding a firefly, its tickle so gentle as it walks across my hand. Did I actually live this before?