Photographers capture moments in time that they see as beautiful, special, and important. They are saving a piece of personal history to remember in the future. Whether it is an event, vacation, a brief expression, or the way the light blankets the snow,  each photo has been documented with the value of safekeeping. These moments may not seem worthy of saving to some people but the photo reflects what the photographer was thinking and feeling in that present space in just the blink of an eye.

If there was ever such a careful record keeper of everyday life it would be my mother-in-law, Sawako Jager. She finds joy in photographing us being together whether that is exploring a park, playing a board game, or enjoying each other’s company. Even the food we chose at a restaurant or the signs of the places we visited were details that she wanted to remember.

Sawako takes so many photos that she often finds herself running out of storage space on her iPhone and computer. We transferred her photos to multiple platforms for safekeeping on Picassa, Shutterfly, and iCloud so that not one photo would be lost in the shuffle of file storage. She seemed to feel a pressing intention to upload and save these photos expediently and properly, taking detailed notes to attempt the process again on her own. Little Nina liked to sit by Sawako’s feet, content dosing off while she worked.

What was even more impressive were the family albums saved over time. Whenever I had a chance, I took the pleasure of leafing through old albums when Derek and Jenn were little kids. Each album is numbered according to the order it was created. There were a multitude of treasures to be found within them.

Following our Thanksgiving trip, Sawako sent us several emails batching the photos she took from our time together so that we could remember them too.

I like to think that I caught on to this practice of saving memories from my mom, Emy Berger, who has been scrap-booking photos into albums for each of my siblings our entire lives. The pages don’t often enough get the credit they deserve because what has been set aside for safekeeping are lives recorded as history. In some ways this blog Game Changers is our version of recording my life with Derek and the things that we value enough to share with the world.