A Lifetime of Memories

I remember Christmas of my 10th year when I got a Brownie box camera from Santa.  I was so incredibly excited and I began recording anything and everything--and haven't changed since.  It was very important to me to "save memories."  I don't know why it was so important to me to save memories, but I remember saying that to myself whenever I took a roll of film into the corner drug store to be printed.  My camera was before cartridges and rolls of film were about three inches wide and had to be threaded onto the empty spool on the other side of the box.   I was always uncomfortable, fearing that I would expose the film during the threading...and I think once or twice I did expose the edges of the first photo on the roll.

Over my lifetime I have saved memories up the wazoo.  At 70, I now wonder who is going to care about the room full of scrapbooks of now-fading photos.   I keep saying I am some day going to scan them and put them on line, but that really is a project of a lifetime.

 

Today at Atria there was a "Residents' Showcase" in the lobby.  They have these things every now and then, giving residents a chance to show off their quilts or crochet items, or collections of this and that. The theme this time was "Albums, Scrapbooks, Writings and Poems."  I had an e-mail from my friend Peggy saying that she and five others, including our mutual friend Nancy, would have displays, and inviting me to come.

Walt needed the car to go to San Francisco and had to leave town between 2:30 and 3, but I could get up to the showcase for half an hour, at least.  

What I had time to skim through was impressive.  Peggy had the largest collection.

I was so impressed with how organized it was...this one of two or three tables of books.  She has books going back to her grandparents, and the book of family stories she has been writing all the while I knew her from the writing group (and before that, long before I joined).  She ended with "the future of scrapbooking," two books printed with Shutterfly.

Seeing a display like this always makes me want to go back to all of those memories I made over the last 60 years and do something with them, but the prospect of tackling all of those scrapbooks and photo albums is so overwhelming I feel as incapacitated as my mother did when thinking about packing up "all this crap" and moving out of her house.

When I got to Atria today, there was a friend of my mother's from Marin county there, visiting with her.  Apparently her kids live in Davis and she had come up for Thanksgiving.  I was very happy to see my mother interacting with someone other than myself.

So...tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the first since 1966 that we will see NONE of our children.  Jeri is in Boston, Tom in Santa Barbara, and Ned recuperating from his surgery and unable to leave the house.  

We are going to the Atria thanksgiving buffet at noontime.  My mother seems unconnected to the holiday and has asked me several times what we are doing tomorrow.  But we'll eat with her.

In the late afternoon we will go to Ned's in-laws' house.  Marta will be there without Ned.  I am making pumpkin pies.  I've already done one.   They asked for a gluten free pie.  I'm not sure if what I made qualifies, but I hope it will be OK.

I still have the regular pumpkin pie to make in the morning.   There is not enough refrigerator space to put it and I didn't want to leave it out overnight, so I'll make it when I get up in the morning.

It's going to be a strange Thanksgiving.

 

My mother and Nancy, whom she says is her

"best friend at Atria."