As time passes...

By:by Bridget, Pittsburgh, PA

As time passes I feel more and more compelled to document these days of our lives. I scrapbook my families history so that years from now, when all that is left of this idylic time is memories, I will have a visual record to keep it all fresh.

When I visit my grandmother lately, she and I sit and look at her photo albums and reminisce. She tells me about her mother, who I will never meet. We compare baby photos of my daughters to hers and look for the resemblances. I can't imagine my times with her without those brilliant and vivid trips down memory lane. I look at my grandfather and see the eyes of my daughter. I look at my mother as a baby and see the same shade of red that my baby's hair is now. While I'll never again see my aunt, I can picture her smile and watch it repeat on my sisters face. I honor the past when I treasure these momentos and I gain a stronger sense of self.

The pictures I take now of my young daughters are carefully preserved so that I'll have them years from now, but even tonight, I realize I'll never hold my newborns in my arms again, never smell their sweet little heads or relish the slobber of a babies kiss. Their pictures and the frailty of my own memory are what I'll have to remind me of the red in their hair, their first smiles, the eyes of my granfather in a wee baby face.

Treasure your memories and pass them on.

Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: My Life As A Scrapbooker, by Ann Norviel