Sunday, March 10, 2002    

 

Scrapbooking....a Life Changing Experience

By:Connie Catlin

Yes, scrapbooking has changed my life...but also it's affected my family in some pretty wonderful ways. In the last couple years I completed about 5-6 scrapbooks of current family events and also did several little gift albums. Then, last summer I decided to do a Heritage album of my mother's side of the family. I had inherited a file cabinet full of pictures, old letters & genealogy charts from my 96 year old aunt when she passed away, and at first it seemed awfully intimidating trying to make sense of it all.

It took weeks to decide how to organize the album (at that time I was thinking "one album".....LOL).I distributed packets of questions to my mom and her sister, hoping to capture those deeply buried memories of their early years.

My 94 year old aunt immediately started writing out her answers to "what do you remember about your grandparents", "what toys did you have as a child", "any special Christmas memories", etc. Ready to begin, I scrapped that first difficult page...every few pages I'd take the book with me when Mom & I visit my Aunt in the home. Hours would fly by as the two of them remisced and I learned much more than I had originally thought because their recollections jogged even more details, long forgotten. The first thing Aunt Issy says when I walk in is, "Did you bring the Book"?

I'm now on book three - I think my Aunt spent 1/2 hour last week looking at her 1923 Graduation page and telling us about old friends and feelings, etc. For at least a few hours, the aches & pains of very old age are forgotten as we all go back to those golden days of her youth. I only wish I had known about scrapbooking when their older sister, the aunt who had gathered all those photos & records, was still alive. But we all feel like she's there in the room, looking down and glad all her years of efforts weren't in vain.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: Why Scrap? Simple!!, by Sheri P.


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