Over the weekend, we inventoried the Christmas decorations. As I’ve mentioned before, Christmas is not my favorite. My daughters relish the holidays, but since we adopted Rosie (a.k.a., the “crazy cat”), the ornaments we began accumulating in 1986 and the pretty tree I purchased when we moved to the forever home have remained in the attic. Now that my daughters have a place of their own, it seemed like the right time to pass Christmas along to folks who will give it a proper home.

While we were up in the attic, my husband and I ended up tidying — donating a number of items, discarding a few others, and, as in the case of my old camera kit, bringing some things back into the house proper.

The Minolta X-700, a Christmas gift in 1983, was a regular companion until about 2002, but after I received my first digital camera, well, it didn’t get out much… and then it ended up in the attic. When my interest in photography waned a few years ago, I took fewer and fewer photos, until I eventually began making do with the just the iPhone or iPad. Good enough, I reasoned.

As I unpacked the kit, though, I remembered the reliably wonderful images the Minolta yielded. Perhaps with too large a dose of nostalgia and too little of reality, I fondly recalled waiting for photos to be developed, wondering if I’d accurately captured this expression or that mood. So I ordered some film and some A76 batteries.

Maybe I can make a bit of holiday magic.