My wife Paula and I are taking Photo One at Moravian College, where she's a professor. She's taking the class for kicks, but I'm there to return to my roots. Between the ages of ten and thirteen, I lived and breathed photography, taking solace in my darkroom at a very difficult time.

(ten year old tim, hanging around)

Yesterday I developed my first "wet-lab" photographic print in more than twenty-five years. What amazes me most is that nearly nothing about it has changed in all that time. The chemicals and equipment all look and work the same, the brand names are the same, the process is the same. This is both surprising and consoling, given that my chosen field (computer software) usually changes every 25 days, never mind years.

(my sister throws a high school party)

Think about it. When I first set up my darkroom, the Apple II was the rage and Carter was a new president. Now, so many years later, it's like a time capsule into my childhood. Watching an image magically appear on the print while agitating the developer tray, feeling my way around under the amber safelight, smelling the chemicals and film ... these all bring me back to a time that was both wonderful and frightening, for while I explored the images of my pre-teen world down in my darkroom, my mother was very sick with Kroan's Disease, and nearly died.

(hiding down in the basement)

Photography and my mom. The connection is appropriate as we ready Tidepool for its public launch next week. Maybe this project is an expensive form of grief therapy for me, besides being a big fat stress sandwich.

When it all seems like too much, I try to remember the start of it, the core of it: I'm making a program my mom would have liked. That's the alpha and the omega. All the rest is bonus.