Over 20 years ago a series of interesting circumstances led me to become the scrap-booker I am now. The first was when I was in my 30’s and visiting my grandparents in Eastern Europe, I had an opportunity to ask my grandfather what one regret he had in his long and interesting life. His response quite surprised me, he regretted he did not value and save his family’s photographs when war forced him from his home as a young man.
The second occurred after the birth of our daughter and the beginning of my dearest friend’s home-based business with the MLM Creative Memories, a paper and album based scrapbooking company. At first, I wanted to support her success and after my first finished album I was hooked. I knew I was fulfilling my artistic passions in a way that was creative as well as archival. It reminded me of my grandfather’s words and his regrets.
The third and most devastating event was the sad news of my FIL’s health crisis, it happened just before our daughters first birthday, we were already living in our multigenerational home and everyone converge here to be together, support one another, and have continuous contact with each other as our family navigated the path of decline. In the end, everyone managed their experience of his passing to the best of their ability. Again, I regretted not having more time and more memories to record for our children.
In the end all of these circumstanced came together in my mind and I was compelled to create a series of albums for the entire family that documented pictorial and written memories as told to me by my MIL mainly, but also other family members shared their stories and pictures. All of the years were now part of our accessible family history. In fact, everyone got copies for five Christmases in a row. Best present ever, and in this case one size did fit all. This was in 2003 and went on until 2008 when some mystery slides yielded more fantastic surprises for a final album.
Now may years later, these books now reside in my MIL bedside table, on her shelf and are well loved and looked through by her, the family, visitors and caregivers. They serve as her memories of her past, the words give her clues as to who the people were now that her memories are weaker. Most importantly, they make her smile with the joy of recognition some days and chuckle in humor at some of the comments and fashions.
I am forever grateful that I was able to document the history of my children’s family and create lovely works of art at the same time.
The scrapbook of memories part 4