I spent yesterday with my BFF. We have known each other for 32 years! Amazing! We are the same (gardens, man-type preferences, favorite movies), and we are so different: she drives a Prius and uses a Droid, but doesn't have a Facebook page or a blog and can't use Powerpoint. We see each other about every other month, meeting half-way for lunch and shopping -- and giggles and sounding-boards. She reflects me, I think. I need her, often, to be reminded of who I was, who I am now, and how I got here. I hope that she will help me find my way back to who I was destined to be.......
I posed the "Annual Scrapbook" idea to her, that I got from Suzanne, who does it every year for her extended family. Suzanne sends out the email to everyone with a topic -- every month for a year -- and each person writes back with a story, a memory, a photo or two, and even another question. "What was your first job?" revealed that her aunt, now in her 70's, once worked as a secretary at a stockyard! For the Thanksgiving gathering, Suzanne simply copies/pastes all those emails (a few hardcopies are scanned in, and some people use Word or WPdoc) into a continuous script, then prints them out on cardstock as well as making a CD copy, and distributes them to "head of family." Everyone who chooses makes more copies and creates a binder for the collection of the year's stories.
Part of the emotional burden of growing older is the fear of forgetting. Perhaps those teenage dreams are now proved to be silly, and perhaps some doors to some alternate futures are really closed for good. But what if I can't remember my own lifestories that I'd want to share with my children (grandchildren) and nieces and nephews? I worry sometimes that without objects to hold and smell and squint at as mnemonic devices or touchstones the memories will -- if I am lucky enough not to have Alzheimer's corrosion -- simply float away or being pushed out by new thoughts. If I do not make a monument to my past, I will lose it.
When my mom died (two years ago now!) we ceased the Christmas gathering at her house -- so it's been almost four years since Mom's side of the family partied at her house, and it's been two years since I saw the Seattle nephews in person, and it's been more than 6 months since I saw the sandwich eaters of Madison. When we gathered at Mom's house, all of the adults fully aware that her clock was ticking, ticking, there were deliberate efforts to tell "Remember when...." stories about ourselves as children. Periodically, she would correct us, and frequently, Dad would chime in with a "I didn't know that!" There's something lost when the family linchpin dies, and something else later lost when the photos are in dusty boxes in the garage apartment.... (somehow, I have all the slides of childhood -- in the days before KodaChrome or Polaroid -- and Brother has Mom's organized and labelled photo albums). My family and I are not great telephoners, or letter writers -- though cells and email have given us so much Multi-Tasking opportunities that, on balance, we do talk more now than we did ten years ago. But the present doesn't seem, in my view, to have the same value or urgency as the past does. The present is mine, sayeth the busy lady -- and the past belongs to all of us. If we can remember it....
I posed the "Annual Scrapbook" idea to her, that I got from Suzanne, who does it every year for her extended family. Suzanne sends out the email to everyone with a topic -- every month for a year -- and each person writes back with a story, a memory, a photo or two, and even another question. "What was your first job?" revealed that her aunt, now in her 70's, once worked as a secretary at a stockyard! For the Thanksgiving gathering, Suzanne simply copies/pastes all those emails (a few hardcopies are scanned in, and some people use Word or WPdoc) into a continuous script, then prints them out on cardstock as well as making a CD copy, and distributes them to "head of family." Everyone who chooses makes more copies and creates a binder for the collection of the year's stories.
Part of the emotional burden of growing older is the fear of forgetting. Perhaps those teenage dreams are now proved to be silly, and perhaps some doors to some alternate futures are really closed for good. But what if I can't remember my own lifestories that I'd want to share with my children (grandchildren) and nieces and nephews? I worry sometimes that without objects to hold and smell and squint at as mnemonic devices or touchstones the memories will -- if I am lucky enough not to have Alzheimer's corrosion -- simply float away or being pushed out by new thoughts. If I do not make a monument to my past, I will lose it.
When my mom died (two years ago now!) we ceased the Christmas gathering at her house -- so it's been almost four years since Mom's side of the family partied at her house, and it's been two years since I saw the Seattle nephews in person, and it's been more than 6 months since I saw the sandwich eaters of Madison. When we gathered at Mom's house, all of the adults fully aware that her clock was ticking, ticking, there were deliberate efforts to tell "Remember when...." stories about ourselves as children. Periodically, she would correct us, and frequently, Dad would chime in with a "I didn't know that!" There's something lost when the family linchpin dies, and something else later lost when the photos are in dusty boxes in the garage apartment.... (somehow, I have all the slides of childhood -- in the days before KodaChrome or Polaroid -- and Brother has Mom's organized and labelled photo albums). My family and I are not great telephoners, or letter writers -- though cells and email have given us so much Multi-Tasking opportunities that, on balance, we do talk more now than we did ten years ago. But the present doesn't seem, in my view, to have the same value or urgency as the past does. The present is mine, sayeth the busy lady -- and the past belongs to all of us. If we can remember it....
We need to gather, and talk, before all the nephs and neeces start bringing their own procreations to the party and start mistelling the family truths and myths. As I get older, it seems more and more important that someone else will tell, again, the story of the nose flutists in Leadville, CO, attracted to our campsite by Dad on the bagpipes. Someone besides me should laugh again at the story of Jeb and the vicious Bantam rooster -- who apparently hated the Vikings and the purple hat worn to the chicken pen...! Does anyone know why Mom said she always wanted to go to China? And how many people remember, with the same exasperated fondness, my grandma at my first wedding, in a cold church on a bitterly cold Saturday morning, dressed in long-johns under polyester slacks under her best wool suit under one of grandpa's coats? Really, my children should know how I met their father and he should tell them about the great ice-storm of the firstborn's first winter.
So, I have a bit of a conundrum: I can travel to and fro to create situations where someone starts talking about Those Days (I shall take a tape-recorder!), OR, I can sit here in a tornado of my own making, in a busy life of work and dirt and books and Facebook Scrabble games -- and start now to communicate the memories. Which ones? How? Memories or memory-making? Or is this just one more thing on the daily Do-List?
I'm 50. If I don't start now, I'll run out of time........ I'll start with the BFF. There is more value just for me -- and not all those other family members -- with BFF memories. I'll be selfish, and giving, in the same action! I'll find myself along the path to and from the past... (how efficient! how thrifty!). I'll start with The Story of The Rose, and then our first beer together, or dancing at the Rainbow, and then the Elvis impersonator, the house on Cherry Street, the Flying J Fiasco, .... and yesterday's adventure at the school house. I should write that one down right now.
Note to self: write in blog every week!
So, I have a bit of a conundrum: I can travel to and fro to create situations where someone starts talking about Those Days (I shall take a tape-recorder!), OR, I can sit here in a tornado of my own making, in a busy life of work and dirt and books and Facebook Scrabble games -- and start now to communicate the memories. Which ones? How? Memories or memory-making? Or is this just one more thing on the daily Do-List?
I'm 50. If I don't start now, I'll run out of time........ I'll start with the BFF. There is more value just for me -- and not all those other family members -- with BFF memories. I'll be selfish, and giving, in the same action! I'll find myself along the path to and from the past... (how efficient! how thrifty!). I'll start with The Story of The Rose, and then our first beer together, or dancing at the Rainbow, and then the Elvis impersonator, the house on Cherry Street, the Flying J Fiasco, .... and yesterday's adventure at the school house. I should write that one down right now.
Note to self: write in blog every week!
