May 07th, 2021

What you see here is that first thing that comes up when I turn my computer on.  I think it's called a screen saver, right?  There are actually two photos, one of Tim (above) and another of me doing the same thing.  Taking an "eternity" photo so instead of just one Tim (or Sam) there are zillions!  We took the pictures at a model home up in Sarasota years ago.  We discovered that when standing just past the beautiful foyer of the home there was a seemingly endless hallway that stretched both to our right and our left and both sides ending with a very large full length mirror.  Because the mirror caught both the object (us) AND our reflection in the other mirror, the effect is what is called an "eternity shot"  We thought it was kind of cool so we each, in turn photographed ourselves.  And for some reason, which I honestly do not remember, I used those pictures for my screen saver.  It alternates between the two photos.

It's been that way for a Very Long Time and since I rarely pay attention to things that are working just fine, I saw no reason to change it.  And then yesterday happened.

I had an experience that I am going to share with you.  You can believe me or not as you wish, it doesn't change the facts of what happened.  The first thing you need to know is that while I am an open minded person, I am not so open minded that my brains have fallen out.  I am a person who questions things.  Not because I want to ruin them (do NOT tell me how magic tricks work because I do not want to know and ps yes, I know that  it's not actually "magic") but because I'm curious. I almost always want to know the why of things.  Generally speaking I do not take things at face value.  No matter what I read or hear, I always am compelled to do my own research to make my own decisions.  So when I tell my story, know that I am starting from that point.

The second thing you should probably know, regarding the upcoming topic anyway, is that I am the descendant of a long line of men who went to sea.  Sailors, fishermen, (probably pirates too, I don't know) traditionally were very superstitious folks and I know for fact, that my own uncles, (my mother's brothers) had some very interesting tales to tell of supposedly supernatural experiences.  They were excellent story tellers, my uncles, and I'm not always certain where the line stood between embellishment and a great recounting of truth.

Personally I am not superstitious at all.  I have no issue opening an umbrella inside - should the occasion call for it, black cats are adorable and I've owned one before, spilling salt only means that I have to clean it up and I only say "bless you" if someone sneezes out of politeness and not to scare away evil.  So with that ground work before us, here goes the story of what happened yesterday.

It was in the late afternoon and I was waiting for a load of towels to finish drying so I could fold and put them away.  It would only be 2 or 3 minutes and so I didn't want to start another whole project for such a short period of time before turning my attention back to laundry, so I sat down at my computer to check emails.  But the dang thing had seized up.  Nothing would open, I couldn't move to another screen, I couldn't even shut it down properly.  Ratz.

But that's ok, I know how to deal with this sort of technological nonsense.  I hit the big blue button and turned the whole dang thing off.  Yup, I just shut her down.  I let it rest while I attended the towels, got them all taken care of before returning to the computer and turning it back on again. It boots back up fairly quickly, so I just stood there and waited expecting to see the screen saver eternity shots of either Tim or myself pop on the screen as per usual.

Instead this popped onto my screen:

It took me a second to wrap my brain around what I was seeing.  This is an extreme close up of my late Mother.  She passed away in 2012. I do not recognize the photograph, by the way. I mean I know it's her, but I do not recall taking this picture.  Maybe I did and I just don't remember it. The picture would  obviously have been a long time, and several different computers, ago.  Maybe closer to 15 years ago?  Where ever this photo originated,  I  know that this is not my screen saver photo.

I sat down and starred at the image on the screen and thought to myself, "huh, timely since it's nearly Mother's Day".  I cleared my throat and said, "Hello Mother, It's nice to see you again".   And then I realized that if the photo went away, nobody would ever believe me so I took the photo of the screen. 

And I'm glad that I did because when I left the room and returned, Mother's picture was gone and the usual screen savers photos were in place once again.  Seriously wow!

I texted the photo of the computer screen to Joy with a nutshell version of what happened and she Wowed me right back.  Her theory is that Mother wanted to be sure we didn't forget her.  As if that were possible.  When Tim had a break I went in to show him and told him what happened.  He looked at the photo and then at me, I looked at him and the we both broke into the Twilight Zone theme song.  hah! 

​So well I'm not sure what to think.  I suppose the computer just, for some reason, pulled a very old photo out of archives (I have thousands of photos in my computer by the way) and coincidentally, it happened to be this photo of my mother which again, I do not recall ever taking.  Every question leads to other questions such as: Why would I have taken such an extreme close up?  Why in black & white?  I now do  a lot of B&W photography, but back then I would have had to have purchased special black & white film instead of colour.   I've only had my current camera for a couple of years.   

Well I don't suppose I'm going to get any actual answers. But my first instinct was the true one.  When I said, "it's nice to see you" I really meant it.  And this weekend, being Mother's Day, it was a very nice surprise.

I suppose it was just a bit of computer serendipity.  Or perhaps, it wasn't.......

Have a great weekend and if you are a Mother, Happy Mother's Day to you.  If you have a Mother, don't forget to make sure she knows she is in my thoughts and in your heart.  If you lost your Mother, make sure she knows that she is remembered.