"Ma, where's the soccer set?"
"In the storage room," my mother called from the kitchen.
"We have a storage room? Since when?" I looked at Isaac. He shrugged and shook his head.
"In the basement," My mother sighed coming into the hallway from the kitchen wiping her hands on a dishtowel.
"Where in the basement?" I questioned.
"There is a door leading off the playroom," she instructed. "It's in there."
I walked to the door that lead downstairs. "If I get lost, send a search party." I dashed down the stairs and took a right which led me into the playroom. "Hey Zoë, Hey Amanda," I said as I walked into the room. They were playing with doll houses in the middle of the floor while the two boys, Jordan and Jason, were watching a cartoon on the big screen TV.
"Daddy, wanna play?" Zoë asked, holding up a male doll. "You can play the Daddy."
"Not right now, honey," I told her. "Maybe later, OK? Daddy wants to find something in the 'storage room'."
"OK, Daddy." She went back to carefully setting up her dollhouse.
I looked around the room looking for a door that could be a storage room. "Holy," I muttered when I noticed the only door in the room that could be it. "This can't be..." I mumbled aloud to myself. I put my hand on the doorknob and opened the door. I grinned.
"Zoë, come look at this!" I turned to my daughter.
She looked at me. "Daddy, that's just the room where we keep the toys!" She replied knowingly.
"It's much more than that," I told her. My daughter joined me at the edge of the room. I flicked on the light. "This is a room where Daddy spent most of his time when he was a teenager."
"You spent most of your time in a black storage room?" She said in an amazed voice.
"It wasn't a storage room back then..." I guided her into the room. It was now clustered with toys. I found where the sink was and pushed away the toys that were on top. I quickly dashed to the other side of the room, found the counter, and found the huge instrument I was looking for. It was in-between two pieces of black cardboard. "My enlarger," I said with a grin. I turned to Zoë, who must of thought her daddy was going crazy. "Zoë, this thing makes pictures."
"I thought cameras made pictures."
I laughed. "Yes Zoë they do, but this thing prints pictures." She looked up at me with a confused look on her face. I laughed. "You know how Daddy and Mommy give those film canisters to the drug store and then get back photographs the next day?" Zoë nodded. "Well, when Daddy was a little boy he used to make the pictures himself using this thing." I put my hand on top of the counter under the enlarger. "This is called an enlarger." I turned back to the instrument and found the easel leaning up against one of the cardboard sides all the way in the back of the enlarger. "Right where I left it," I mumbled in delight. I pulled it out and blew off the dust. I held the white easel in my hands and gazed at it, "I'd love to have a darkroom in the house again," I muttered. I looked back up at the enlarger. "Where's the negative holder?" I searched for it with my hand and came out triumphantly. "I can't believe it's all here!" I squealed.
"Why wouldn't it be?"
I looked up at the sound of my mother's voice. Zoë was standing next to her in the doorway. My mom smiled and walked towards me. "You used to live down here."
"Me and my chemicals," I chuckled. I shook my head in disbelief. "I just cannot believe this old thing is still here." I brushed some dust away from the timer that was attached to the enlarger. "I bet the bulb is burned out."
"Probably," Mom replied.
"Let's see." I flicked the button on the clock that would turn on the light. Nothing happened. I pushed the second hand down to the thirty second mark and still nothing. I stamped my foot on the floor lightly. "I was right."
"Get a new one at the hardware store," my mother suggested.
"I will," I replied, not looking away from my rediscovered toy.
"Your Daddy used to love to take pictures," Mom was saying to Zoë. "He'd take pictures of anything and everything; trees, birds, lakes, bunnies... everything! He loved the landscape pictures the best."
"What's that?" Zoë questioned.
"Scenery," Mom explained. "Like pictures of fields. Whenever it snowed and I couldn't find him, I knew to check his dresser to see if his camera was missing. It always was. The moment he'd wake up, he'd grab his film and his camera and run out the door. Forgetting that he needed to get dressed first! We'd find him in the front lawn taking pictures of the falling snow or of icicles hanging from the roof." I blushed slightly at the memory. "Then he'd be down here printing his beautiful black and white stills. Everyone used to say he should win awards for those pictures. Actually one time your Daddy had his pictures up in an art show-"
"Twice," I put in. I turned to my daughter and her grandmother. "It was twice."
My mother grinned. "He won a blue ribbon for a picture he called 'Winter Fantasy'."
I nodded. "That was a good print, wasn't it?"
"Taylor, you won $500 for it!" My mother insisted. "It was fantastic."
"That's a lot of money Daddy!" Zoë exclaimed, her voice full of amazement. "I wanna see it!"
"I wonder where it is," I thought aloud.
"Turn around," Mom instructed. I did as she said. "Take a step to your left."
My mouth dropped when I saw the top of a mounted frame sticking out over a few boxes. I grabbed it and quickly knelt down to my daughter's eye level. "This is it," I told her holding the print so she could see. "This is 'Winter Fantasy'." The print was amazing, I had to agree. I had spent a lot of time on it and it showed. It was taken during a snow storm in New York City one year. I had looked out my window of our hotel and found that the streets were covered with a blanket of perfect white snow, untouched. I quickly grabbed my boots and didn't even bother to throw on pants before loading my camera and dashing over to Central Park. I stood outside for a few moments in my jacket and walked along the path, snapping pictures as I walked. The snow was fluttering down lightly all around me which made the scene even more breath taking. I walked all the way down to the ice skating rink and back, stopping only to reload my film. Every shot on those two rolls was amazing but I picked just one to enlarge: a large landscape of a clearing within a forest of trees, covered in a blanket of pure untouched snow, a rarity in the city. In the background there were a few buildings, blurred because of the depth of field I had chosen to capture. The snow attached to the trees shone a glorious white and I had even managed to catch a bit of the lake which was in the clearing. I was impressed with my work, and so were the judges of the contest I entered it in. First place and my name in the local newspaper, plus the prize money which I donated to the local food bank in the band's name.
"It's pretty!" Zoë gushed. "Daddy! That is where we picnic!"
I nodded. "Yes, that is where we picnic."
I went to put the print back on the wall but my mother stopped me. "This," she said taking the frame from my hand, "is going back up in the living room."