We didn’t have much as kids and we didn’t socialize with other families in town, so there were no birthday parties or spontaneous buying of gifts. But at Christmas, great gifts would miraculously appear under the tree.

For my 10th birthday my parents bought me a small Kodak camera. A roll of film and a package of flashbulbs. Christmas morning ice fog had frost on every tree outside. For the first time I was able to capture beauty. I used up the whole roll of film and my mother paid to get the pictures developed. In black-and-white of course. I would gaze in wonder remembering the spectacular beauty.

Times got tougher soon after that and we could no longer afford to buy any more film or have any more pictures developed.

When I got married at 16 and my husband was 19, the one thing we owned was a Polaroid camera. We took lots of pictures of our children. Plus pictures of each other. I have always been grateful that he always wrote the month and year on the back of every picture. But it was never my camera, or always my choice of what picture I thought would be good.

Roll 18 years ahead, getting divorced, starting with nothing, and my daughter is going to be graduating. I had managed to be able to get a few things together and I saved enough to buy a small camera. So I was able to take pictures and memories again and get them developed.

That camera lasted me 10 years. It captured my daughter’s university graduation, my second love of my life, Brian and my first Christmas together. I first seen the Rockies with that camera. The pictures were beautiful but I knew they could be better but that was a big cost. And during most of those years I paid child support for my youngest son and helped my daughter as much as possible to subsidize her student loan. So no fancy camera.

By Christmas 2001 I had 6 very successful and kind children. They knew due to an inheritance, that I was going to get on a plane for the first time in my life and fly to Europe for almost three weeks in May of 2002. So they got together and bought me a pocket digital Canon. The autofocus feature took fantastic pictures. The memory card could hold thousands of pictures. I went through a lot of AA batteries in those three weeks. Belfast, Amsterdam, Lucerne, Venice, Rome, Florence, Vienna, and Paris. A photographer’s dream.

That little camera lasted me over 15 years. I just finally started to realize all the different settings I could use on it, and that it could take lenses. The collection of pictures during that period were spectacular. I loved it. During all my times of depression the one thing that always brought me out of it and out into the world was my camera.

So I then decided to semi-retire and move to Selkirk and lo and behold my little camera was lost. I don’t know if it got put into a box and got thrown out. It may have even gotten left in the rental car that I had and just never got returned. For years after, I would hope that maybe here is where I decided to tuck it away. But never found. Finances were a little tight due to reduced income so I convinced myself my iPhone was good enough. And I did have some fantastic photos but they would be blurry when enlarged. If a wanted a 8×10 the picture wasn’t sharp. I wanted sharp.

Then came the time when I was feeling really good about my life both emotionally and financially. I had turned 65 and I decided to complete two of my bucket list items. Graduate high school and travel to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the Cabot Trail.

Just prior to my birthday a friend asked me to take their wedding pictures. And so I decided to buy my dream camera. So late one night I clicked on my Amazon and ordered this wonderful camera kit. All kinds a little accessories. The second part of the order was the book Canon Rebel T7 for Dummies.

The wedding pictures were fantastic. And the east coast pictures unbelievable.

I finally again realized my dream of capturing the beauty of trees painted with frost. Dreams may take a while but they do come true.