Capturing Memories

While moving furniture around this month, I discovered a bookcase full of old photo albums. Some were those cheap books where you slide the picture in between the plastic. Others were massive, labor-intensive Creative Memories albums, complete with coordinating scrapbook paper and perfect stick-on letters.

I hadn’t looked at these photo albums for such a long time, mostly because I feel guilty I don’t do any kind of scrapbooking anymore. Catie has part of a baby book, but that’s about it. If the other kids ask, I’ll scrounge up the cell phone I used during their toddler years and tell them to scroll through the old pictures.

Looking at all those memories–some from college, others from our wedding, lots from our first house together, and even more from the kids as babies–was like a history lesson.

So much of what I had forgotten was obvious in those pictures. Like the fact Mike and I have aged about fifty years, even though I don’t see it when I look in the mirror. Also we are laughing in most of the candid pictures–especially those with our little babies. I always remember that season as so chaotic and exhausting, but we look like we are having the TIME OF OUR LIVES. Looking back, I can also see we spent too much time and money decorating our first couple houses. We were young and free, why didn’t we drive to New Orleans for the weekend or train for a triathlon? Geesh! Didn’t we realize we had the rest of our lives to shop for couches?

But the pictures also made me feel horrible for all the memory-keeping I’m not doing now. If those old pictures reminded me so much I had forgotten, what would happen to the memories we’re making now? How could I look back on pictures I wasn’t taking?

Before I made a lot of promises about all the pictures I would DEFINITELY start taking, I noticed what was not in those photo albums. Pictures were there, yes. But not the actual memories, not how it felt to live through those seasons. All that was in my mind.

Looking at the snapshot of Mike and standing proudly next to our new, plaid couch brings back the weeks we drove from furniture store to furniture store trying to find the perfect one. The pictures taken during our wedding reminds me of all the inside jokes my bridesmaids and I had that weekend. Snapshots of me playing airplane with Baby Sam on my knees and Baby Elisabeth on my chest brought back the hundreds of afternoons we spent doing just that.

So many of these memories were already sealed in my mind. Yes, looking at the pictures sparked smells and emotions I’d forgotten, but the photo albums weren’t the treasure. All the meat of the memory was still frozen in my brain.

With this discovery, I let myself off the hook about taking more pictures and compiling scrapbooks. Our family is living the dream, doing all the fun memory-making stuff. I’m trying my best to be present for these memories, to soak up the tastes, smells, and emotions of all of this time.

And I will remember what’s important All I need to remember how the boys played Star Wars for hours or what Catie looked like right before she became a teenager is a quick snapshot.

The exact kind I can snap with my cell phone.