Make Sure Your Children’s Memories Include You

I’m sure I’m not the only one who tackles major projects in the summer. This season just lends itself to a perfect balance of being relaxed enough to work hard without feeling overwhelmed.

Somehow knowing I don’t have a deadline makes me want to clean out all the closets, deep clean the house, and tackle those special projects I’ve been thinking about for years.

Today I decided to pull out four decades worth of family photos with the goal of scanning them all.

Once they are stored on my computer, I can easily create photo books to share with my family.

It’s a great goal even if I already know I probably won’t finish it in one summer.

Although I only scanned what feels like one percent of our photos today, I had a blast. And, as usual, I learned something, too.

Taking this trip down memory lane was especially fun because of the backgrounds of some of the photographs.

I can imagine my younger self pointing the camera at one of my children, completely unaware of how much more I was actually capturing.

It’s in the background that I find myself unlocking the memories of what our life was really like before we became the empty nester grandparents we are today.

I wonder how often we miss the background of our everyday life?

When we’re busy taking care of our children, how often do we miss the subtle looks or words they send our way?

When we put our heads on our pillow at night and mentally go over our day, is there something blurry around the edges that we can’t quite put our finger on, something we missed?

Looking at those pictures today, I noticed everything that was not quite in the frame.

I saw our old cars, something I never would have thought to take a picture of. I saw what our yard looked like, how small the plants looked without the benefit of decades of growth. I saw what was strewn about our house, evidence of how we had lived our life that day.

I saw a lot more than I probably noticed when I was behind my camera taking those pictures.

Back then, being behind a camera meant it had been taken out for the sole purpose of taking pictures.

There wasn’t a way to instantly display them somewhere or share them with anyone. I know it’s shocking to imagine a time before the internet, but that really was the reality when I was a young mommy.

I’m glad I took the time to take the pictures.

I’m really grateful that I didn’t clean up first too. It’s nice to go back in time, to have a second chance to see how we actually lived our life way back when sticky fingers and kool-aid stained smiles seemed unending.

But I’m also glad I put the camera down. I’m grateful I didn’t have a cell phone back then the way I do now.

I wonder if it would help if we put down our phones and shifted our focus a bit during the day-to-day job of living our life.

It’s not enough to give our children a screen-free childhood. Parents of young children need to be free from screens too.

Perhaps we need to slow down and enjoy the simple things more than trying to achieve whatever our version of a perfect family looks like.

Most of the photos I looked at today wouldn’t make the cut if I felt the need to share with the online world.

I’m sure I would have wanted to clean things up a bit before I invited others to observe our life.

Thankfully I can look at those photos and remember the life we lived because taking the picture was just a second in time back then, not my entire focus.

What if we only pull our phones out to take the special shot? What if we don’t feel the need to have them in front of us at all times?

Would we be able to focus more on the blurry background of what will become our babies’ childhood memories if we take our eyes off social media?

I know my words are probably not very popular. I can only share from the perspective of someone who has large plastic tubs of photographic memories to shift through now that my children’s childhood is very much in the past.

The 80s and early 90s were a much simpler time.

It’s a time we’ll never be able to go back to, but we can make our own choices about how to live our life now.

I can’t help but think the best place to start includes slowing down, focusing on what’s right in front of us, and creating memories for our children that will include us.

Our memories will be sweeter for us too if we don’t miss what is right in front of us because we are on our phone.

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