A Legacy of Albums

By:Brenda Becknell

There was a popular song in the 70's that started out with the words "If I could save time in a bottle....". While we may not be able to do exactly that, we can capture time through our scrapbooks.

When we create a scrapbook, we are doing much more than pasting pictures into an album. We are creating a small time capsule of our lives and our family, our interests, and our feelings. In a way, it's like writing a biography with pictures. Our pictures set the stage, and our journaling fills in the details. Even the accents we choose for our pages give clues to our personalities - do we choose sophisticated tones, whimsical accents, or snazzy embellishments.

My children are in college now, but when I work on scrapbooks of their (and mine!) younger days, I am flooded with memories of events and feelings that had long been forgotten, or at least not thought about for some time. I see pictures of my grandparents, who are no longer with us, and am so glad I have those pictures and can create pages that tell about them and what they meant to me.

When I work on scrapbooks of current pictures, I realize just how much goes on in our lives. The pictures aren't just of events like birthdays and Christmas; often, they're just pictures of everyday life - candid shots of friends laughing together, pictures of the damage done to a pair of shoes by the new puppy, or the dorm room of our college freshman. But all these moments create the fabric of our lives. I hope someday my children (and maybe grandchildren) will look back at these scrapbook albums and remember all the stories, big and small, behind the pages.



Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: Make time for your scrapbooks, by Carie F.