Meandering Down Memory Lane

This is my last full week at home on maternity leave, and I’ve been a crazy person. All the projects which have sat around for a year (or more) as they waited patiently for me to “get them done while I’m on maternity leave” are now looming over me, accusing me of being a serial procrastinator. The clock is ticking on my time off, and I’m suddenly gripped by a manic compulsion to wrap up all the half-finished jobs.

One of said projects is weeding through a monster box filled with photographs from the past five to ten years and making some order of them. I have roughly a dozen or so empty frames sitting collecting dust. They’ve sat in my bedroom, leaning against the wall, making my husband angry every time he walks past them.

Him: “When are you going to put these together and get them off the floor?”

Me: “I’ll get to it before I go back to work.”

Him: “Your maternity leave is almost over.”

Me: “I’ll get to it.”

Him: “Uh-huh. Sure you will.”

What can I say? The man knows me. Lucky for him, the frames start to bother me as much as they do him, so I set aside a day to attack the photos with a vengeance. My plan is to glance at each photo, and toss it into one of four piles.

1. TRASH (for duplicates, fuzzies, etc).  There are a ridiculous number of photos, because both hubby and I snap photos incessantly with our camera phones, and I love printing them out, even though we’ve got 10 separate pics of my daughter eating a snickers bar. I expect TRASH will be the largest pile.

2. ALBUM. For the cute “keepers”—those that would go in a photo album (a project for yet another day)

3. SCRAPBOOK. Special ones to eventually be placed in the adorable but resource-intensive scrapbook, which maybe I’ll put together when I retire, or

 4. FRAME. Super-duper special ones I intend to display.

I’m going to be ruthless in my decision making process. Utterly ruthless. Riiiight.

I stare at each one, remembering the time, the place, and the people. Some are of my eldest daughter as a baby, and I marvel at how much her new baby sister looks like her. Some are of pets we’ve loved and lost. Some are of my grandparents who I lost ten years ago. I imagine how crazy they would be about my kids. I laugh. I cry. I go through a cathartic moment. Okay, many cathartic moments.

In the first hour, I’ve made it through only a small portion of the photos, and there are none in the trash pile. I feel a kinship with the crazy people on the show HOARDERS, because my I can’t bear to throw any of them out. Each one is a precious memory.

After seven hours of work, I’ve still got a monster box of photos, but I’ve cleared the pile of frames on the bedroom floor. My husband is pleased, and I’ve now got framed photos documenting the genesis of our nuclear family. Happy, smiling faces of our parents, grandparents, and our children line the hallway. I even put together a collage of just me and my husband and some great times we’ve had together.  At Venice Beach, CA when we were just dating. His graduation. Our fourth anniversary (seems a lifetime ago). A crazy fun ski trip from before we had kids.

I didn’t attain my goal of clearing the box, but I did achieve something far more precious. I walk up and down the hallway of my home, feeling centered, balanced, and extremely lucky to have such a strong sense of family.

If you have a big box of photos somewhere that you’re dreading going through, take my advice. Turn off the TV tonight, pull it out, and just flip through a few. If you have someone with you to reminisce with— or torture with your personal stories— even better. Those fifty photos you took of your kid eating spaghetti with their hands will bring more joy to your soul than you believed possible. J