By NICOLE CARTRETTE
Staff Writer

When I graduated from high school, my grandma put together a special photo album for me. The last 10 or so pages were left empty.

Included were a variety of pictures taken throughout my life and a number of family snapshots. Without one written word, it said something. A picture of my dad, a young man in a U.S. Air Force uniform, tells something about the importance of country.

A picture of me, just a toddler, in a ruffled red dress holding a microphone while reciting my part in the church Christmas program speaks to faith in God.

Another snapshot of my grandpa sitting in the kitchen floor with me as a toddler and his work lunchbox by his side hints to the value of work and play.

A picture of my mom, dad and brother snuggling a newborn says something about the love of family and togetherness.

As the pages turn, I grow up. My grandparents retire and there are countless pictures of family vacations.

We are sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows. Hiking the mountains. Playing on the beach. Screaming on a rollercoaster.

Those images are about the best places where we were together.

On one page, following the pictures is a Dear Abby column clipped from the Charleston Gazette newspaper. It was reprinted several times in the column and known as President Garfield’s “Rules for Living.”

It is believed while a young man, President Garfield received these “rules for living” from an elderly friend and that he cherished them to the end of his life. They read:

-Never be idle.

-Make few promises.

-Always speak the truth.

-Live within your income.

-Never speak evil of anyone.

-Keep good company, or none.

-Live up to your engagements.

-Never play games of chance.

-Drink no intoxicating drinks.

-Good character is above everything else.

-Keep your own secrets, if you have any.

-Never borrow if you can possibly help it.

-Do not marry until you are able to support a wife.

-When you speak to a person, look into his eyes.

-Save when you are young to spend when you are old.

-Never run into debt unless you see a way out again.

-Good company and good conversation are the sinews of virtue.

-Your character cannot be essentially injured except by your own acts.

-If anybody speaks evil of you, let your life be so that no one believes him.

-When you retire at night, think over what you have done during the day.

-If your hands cannot be employed usefully, attend to the culture of your mind.

-Read the above carefully and thoughtfully at least once a week.

In looking back on that clipping and my album, I realize my album in a lot of ways was my grandma’s very own rules for living. She said with pictures what words could not, and in many ways, said so much more.

That mix of pictures and clippings are real rules that were lived. They demonstrate all the things about living and family that my grandma wanted me to know were important.

The empty pages at the back of the album were something different.

Like my life, they were mine and mine alone to fill – and that is perhaps the greatest unwritten rule – that she understood she could give me her rules and President Garfield’s, but as individuals, we all must write our own.