We do not live in a “timeless” era. Everything we use, everything we do is based on the technology that moves forward now, one split hair at a time. I was content with the last thing I had; I was always content with the last thing that I had. The last time I remember real simplicity was in childhood. We had a computer, but I had no real interest in using it. Sometimes I watched my dad play puzzle games, but I spent most of the warmer months tending to my dandelion garden that grew along the wall that separated our yard from the neighbors’. I remember air that smelled like sunshine and lilacs; I remember a grapevine growing on an arch over the bench swing up the hill from all those rabbit holes. I remember so many disposable cameras clipping me off in single frames, stealing moments that would otherwise have been forgotten. Those images now, five inches by seven, their bright vivid colors tell so many stories from better times. Simpler times. Here is my beard-wearing father holding baby me in his arms, feeding me a slice of an orange. Here is a glossy print of my brother and I in a colorful stroller, each of us holding a melting bomb pop. Here is the cat we used to have, crawling out of Dad’s work boot. Here’s the garden in what was once our backyard. I wish I could show a photo or write a sentence, and with conviction, show it to you and say “I will make you feel what I feel.” It’s impossible, though, because the photo of my dad sharing that orange with me is so timeless, and you will never know its value because it is not your moment. Sometimes I look around me at my possessions and feel sick for the timelessness that I wish still existed in my life. I hold an old camera in my hands and wonder what happened to its owner, I try to imagine what it would have been like to photograph and live in the era of this camera’s birth. If it’s a model from the 1930’s, maybe I want to cry because I will never dance with my beau to my favorite song by my favorite big band. If it’s a model from the 1950’s, maybe I imagine myself in a day dress, carrying my camera and my baby girl into an ice cream parlor for a waffle cone. It’s not only with cameras, either. Sometimes at work in the grocery store, I see packaging on some item and think that it looks frumpy or outdated. I look at the jelly in glass jars and wish that I had lived my grandmother’s life. Timelessness has such an appealing novelty, and I’m afraid that in this era, it’s something that is becoming impossible to achieve. I wish I could make someone feel the way I do.