Archiving Memories

I find it ironic that I’m an extremely sentimental person, but I have the absolute worst memory of anyone I’ve ever met.  Seriously, it’s scary how bad my memory is.  I half-jokingly tell the Husband that he won’t realize I have alzheimer's until it’s too late because my memory is already so bad.  I’m pretty sure he secretly agrees with me.  Through the years, I’ve stored my memories through keeping mementos, taking lots of photos and journaling.

I used to keep everything remotely sentimental in shoe boxes in my closet when I was younger.  Ticket stubs, random party favors I received, and lots of random knick knacks that meant something to me but probably just looked like junk to everyone else.  As I grew up and started to fear that I would become a pack rat, I forced myself to go through said boxes and weed out anything with which I couldn’t attach a specific memory.  Soon, I became painfully aware that I was doing a disservice to such precious mementos by keeping them in ugly shoe boxes (plus, I’m pretty sure my sister complained to me about all the ugly boxes in our closet), that I decided to upgrade to nice memory boxes.  Being too young to have any disposable income, I asked for some for Christmas.  My siblings looked at me in horror as I opened empty boxes that Christmas and was absolutely thrilled!  They asked me what was inside and, when I said, “Nothing.  They’re boxes to put things in,” they just looked at me like I was crazy and went back to building their Legos.  I still keep mementos, though not with the fervor I did when I was ten .  As I grew older, photos and journaling took over most of my memory keeping.  They take up much less space!

I love pictures for the memories they hold.  I’m not necessarily good at taking pictures, but I take a LOT to make up for that.  I figure, the more I take, the better the odds are that one of them is bound to come out decent.  The problem is, I have trouble bringing myself to delete any.  Thank God for digital photography!  I can’t imagine how much money I’d be wasting if it was all film!
I take a lot of photos in a row figuring that I’ll weed out the bad ones and have one or two from that particular pack as keepers.  When it comes time to hit that ‘delete’ button, I grow weak.  What if that is the specific look in my child’s face that I’m looking for later in life?  What if the other photos don’t catch the nuance quite the same way?  I’ve finally been forcing myself to weed out the out-of-focus and obviously bad ones.  I’m a tad embarrassed to admit that it’s been a very emotional time for me.  

Taking lots of pictures as often as I remember to is my antidote for a bad memory. Not only do they carry sentimental memories, the pictures act as much of a reference.  When I can’t remember how old the Boy was when he took his first steps, I just look for the pictures I took.  The digital date stamp is a life saver!  I’m not talking about the ugly orange stamp you can choose to have your camera stamp on the front of your photo, but the one that is in the picture’s digital data.  I love that I can just click on a photo in my computer and see what date it was taken.  There are a few people who have taken photos of events that I was unable to photograph or was too busy being in to take myself (wedding, children’s first few days, etc) and they were very kind and gave me the photos.  I’m not sure if their cameras dates weren’t set right or the files lose something in editing, but some dates were off by the year...others are just out there.  I have some photos that claim to be from 1970!  I wasn’t even alive in 1970!  Luckily, most of those events are pretty much ingrained in my memory, so there’s no question in my mind of when they occurred.  

Before I had a camera to capture my memories and archive my life, I journaled on an impressively regular basis.  I slowed down in college and have pretty much stopped at this point in my life.  I think I write in my journal about twice a year.  I do miss it.  There is something cathartic about just getting everything out on paper and then looking at it from outside your brain.  It definitely takes more work than just snapping a picture or two (or 100) and there is more of my actual thoughts and memories in journaling than photography.  And this is why I choose the latter over the former more often than not.  

Up until I started this blog, I have always written faster and more fluidly on paper than the computer.  In college, I wrote all of my outlines and rough drafts on lined paper.  I felt more at home with that medium because of my journaling.  I was rather surprised and a bit saddened when I realized that I now think better while typing than writing.  My brain also works so erratically and I forget (only to remember later) what I wanted to write or expand on that it is much more conducive to be able to go back a few sentences and interject an idea...or switch around paragraphs.  All that to say, I realized soon after starting this blog that it is my new way of journaling.  A bit more public, so therefore a bit more guarded, but it feels good to get my thoughts out of my head and onto ‘paper’.