Scrapping for the Soul

By:Deann L.

It's hard to believe that only two years ago I didn't even know what the term "scrapbooking" meant. I attended a Creative Memories workshop given by a friend for purely logical reasons. Being a Virgo, I pride myself on being very logical! Why spend a lot of money on photographs if they weren't going to last very long? I think my greatest surprise in preserving my memories is that not only is it practical, it is also good for my soul.

I was raised by my natural father and my stepmother. My own mother had died a month before I turned three. These facts were known to me all of my life. For a lot of reasons, my mother was seldom talked about and I often wondered what she had been like. Did she like to cook? Did she have a sense of humor? My older sisters filled in some of the blanks after I left home, but the essense of my mother was missing. I couldn't really imagine the person she was.

As I sat in my first scrapping class, I felt at a very deep level that I was being shown a way to connect with my past. Here was a way to make sure also that future generations would not have to ask the same questions about me that I had asked about my mother. I began the journey through time, and as the months passed, members of my family sent pictures of my mother and father when they were young and told the stories of their youth. I smiled when I saw the first picture of my mother dressed in a stylish hat and fashionable dress in the late 1930's. Even though I do not resemble my mother, it is obvious in the picture that she had a great sense of style, which I like to think I share. My mother has been gone for forty years, so these images are almost more precious than I can express. No one had ever told me that my mother loved to get dressed up, but the pictures did. As I look on photographs of her holding me as a baby, I can see the love in her eyes that I do not remember. It touches my heart more than any story ever told to me about her. As I work on my scrapbooks now, I try to place in them what I want my children to remember after I am gone. An added blessing is that I have been elected as the "family historian." I am very happy to serve in this capacity. As I use my scrapbooks to tie the past to the future, I feel I tie together the little girl I was to the woman I am today, and that is good for my soul.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: Scrapbooking For My Grandmother, by Jenna Beegle, Woodstock, GA