Your Photos are Calling

How did it ever come to this? 

You are 3 1/2 years behind in putting your photos into a scrapbook.  That part, you understand.  You mistrust, even, people who are "caught up" to the very month they are living. 

But how did you ever come to the place where being so far behind would weigh on you?

You have friends who don't keep scrapbooks, and they don't seem to mind.

***

Why do you feel pressure about this? 

That you let your life stop in October of '08 on Crazy Hair Night at Awana when Gemma was making that same frumpled smile at the camera that Gramma Gemma used to make?

***

It would be one thing if you didn't like scrapbooks.  But you love them.  Yours, anyway.  The "thing you'd save in case of fire" deal and all that. 

It would be one thing if you didn't like making scrapbooks.  But you love that, too! 

Whenever you scrap, you feel like a genius at work, a multi-media story-teller, a victor writing the history.

So why has it been months since you've stuck a photo onto a page?

***

It's not because you're busy.  There are pockets of time.  Here and there.

It's not because you don't have the space. 

You have an entire desk--a postal sorting table once used in the town of Colby, Kansas--devoted to scrapbooks so that you never have to put anything away or clean up or pull stuff out just to get started.

It's on that desk that the frumpled face of Gemma at age 4 is smiling up at you.

***

Maybe. . .as much as you like scrapbooks and the making of them, they still feel like something done for someone else.  Your kids, in particular.

And maybe you already feel like you do plenty for them.

***

You know what got you started thinking about it: 

Bryan's comment that he had thoughtfully placed a big mover's blanked in the back of your mini-van so that when he "starts hauling bricks and manure" this Spring, it won't make a mess.

Bricks.  And manure.  In your minivan.

Well, of course, he would have to.  What?  Is he supposed to rent a vehicle to get the stuff he needs for the yard?

But you fantasize about showing up at his cubicle at work with a pile of bricks and manure and setting them down on top of a mover's blanket while he's doing his job.

Silly fantasy.  You'd never get past the first security gate, let alone the second.

***

You have this humble blog, though, you're own little space where you can write what you want and change the layout if you want or not do much at all, if you want. 

It's not for your kids.  It's not for your husband.  It's your own small desk.  And it's where your life can't be stopped in a certain day of a certain month.

It's a place where photos do not have a voice until you've selected them.