UNCONVENTIONAL SCRAPBOOKS

I love scrapbooks - all those great family memories perfectly preserved.  Smiling faces framed by cute, color coordinated papers, ticket stubs and school programs preserved for future generations.  The story of a person or a  families life, often the good and the bad, right there on the pages.  You can take it off the shelf and look at it whenever you want.  It's ok if you forget a detail of a momentous occasion because it's waiting patiently for you to rediscover it in the pages of the scrapbook.  It's like our own personal pensive.  Take that Albus Dumbledore!

I admire scrapbooks and scrapbookers so much that I once tried to be one.  That is, I tried to be a scrapbooker, not a scrapbook.  I set out on a quest to take a picture of every important second in the lives of my loved ones.  "Wait, wait, let me grab my camera," became my mantra.  I obsessively read Creating Keepsakes from cover to cover eager to learn the latest tips and tricks.  Every spare penny I had went to the scrapbook store.  I even bought a tote bag with the motto "She Who Dies With The Most Supplies Wins!" emblazoned upon it.  Then I set out to make myself a winner.  While my daughter napped I feverishly turned out page after page.  In no time I had scrapbooked our family vacation to Sesame Street in Philadelphia.  Then I bought a scrapbook and documented every important moment from my pregnancy through the first year of my daughter's life.  Then I began compiling family scrapbooks where I documented the important (pumpkin picking, Christmas day, weddings, etc.) to the mundane (packing for a weekend getaway, my three year old daughter's unique way of eating a taco, how adorable the cat looked while sleeping in her favorite chair).

Then life happened.  You know how it is.  The kids grow up and stop taking afternoon naps.  You look at your pictures.  I mean really LOOK at your pictures and realize that the fuzzy picture was not a one time mistake it's a nearly every time mistake.  Clearly, you are never going to win any awards for your photography.  You realize that while it is fun to buy scrapbook supplies with your mad money, it is also fun to buy a new shirt, lipstick, book, candle holder, etc.  The next thing you know your glossy photos and snappy embellishments are languishing half forgotten in a shoe box.  And those special moments are just as special even it you don't bring your camera along to document them.

We still pull the scrapbooks out and look at them from time to time.  I'm glad I spent the time and money on creating them.  If they ever get lost or ruined I suspect I will mourn their loss like I would mourn the loss of a beloved family member.  Yet somehow I have lost all interest in making anymore scrapbooks.  I feel bad for us:   my family and my memories.  Sometimes something will happen in our lives and I wonder if anyone will remember it in ten years, in twenty years.  Then I start to think that maybe I should take up scrapbooking again.   But, as you can imagine, my life is not suddenly filled with hours of free time in which to scrapbook.  In fact, I really can't even think of when I would squeeze another activity into my life.

One day I was going about my usual business.  Driving the Mom Taxi, taming the relentless laundry monster, writing a grocery list . . . You know the drill.  Suddenly I looked around our home and realized that I didn't need to forgo sleep or give up my dream of finishing the latest bestseller on my nightstand because our family scrapbook was all around us.  No, not encoded in the muddy footprints on the mudroom floor, or tucked into the sagging couch cushions.

Our family scrapbook was there in the family photograph hanging on the wall.  The one in which I made everyone wear coordinating colors because that is what the "helpful hints for a great photo shoot" paper said we should do.  Every time we look at that picture we notice that my daughter's eyes have that slightly glazed over look that comes from having a fever.  She did indeed have a fever and I probably should have cancelled our appointment but instead we soldiered onward.  

Our home does not only contain a photographic record of our lives together.  On the wall hangs the cuckoo clock that my husband snuck onto our wedding registry.  It was purchased for us by my work colleagues.  I no longer work at that job but I think of my former colleagues with fond memories whenever that stinking bird chirps the hour.  The stained and annotated pages of my favorite cookbook contain a record of the dishes we liked and disliked as a family.  Surely the page with the chicken parmesan casserole will prompt my family to remember the time I proudly served up steaming portions of the casserole on "the good dishes" only to discover that the chicken was still raw in the middle.

Speaking of dishes, I have a plethora of them.  Every year when I get out the Christmas dishes we fondly remember the Christmas that my husband was so excited over the sausage soufflé that he dropped his fork on his plate and chipped the edge of the dish.  Incidentally it happened the very first Christmas morning that we used the dishes.

I may have a small time addiction to the printed word.  My book shelves are loaded down with my favorites.  I hope that every time my daughter looks at them she is filled with fond memories of our reading lives together.  There are the Harry Potter books we read together as a family a chapter at a time over summer vacations.  There is my collection of Little Golden Books that my husband helped me hunt for on our antiquing dates.  Many of my books were given to me as gifts.  Often the inside cover of the book bears an inscription from the gift giver. As the world progressively moves towards the type written word these inscriptions written in the gift givers own handwriting become all the more special.

All of this is to say that we can all relax.  Our children are going to turn out happy and well adjusted even if they don't have a scrapbook to prove it.  Many of the objects we have found room for in our homes will serve as a scrapbook of sorts for our children and other family members.  So pour yourself a glass of wine, run a bubble bath and finally finish reading that book on your nightstand!  And when you are good and relaxed look around your home and rediscover the memories that are already waiting there.

Happy Reading!

Missy