Loose Leaf Notes

“You spend the first part of your life collecting things and the second half getting rid of them.” Isabel Allende

I’ve always been a documenter. I have dozens and dozens of photo albums that I started keeping in the ‘70s.  Most are the bulky magnetic self-stick 3-ring albums, but once they collected and started to take up all my bookshelf space, I went to small 4×6 albums. They filled up fast.

Then, with the onset of digital cameras and grandchildren, I started taking a lot more pictures and went to a midsize album, 2 per page and easy to handle. I tried to only develop a few of the best of each occasion, unlike the old days when I put everything I took in the albums. I tried to keep one album for each marked year (fat chance).

It takes a long time to wrap your head around impermanence. It’s an ongoing process. But I have come to terms with the fact that my “stuff” will likely either end up in the landfill or be picked over at estate sales like my parents’ things were. I’m realistic in the knowledge that my sons won’t want much of my stuff. They have enough of their own stuff. But photos are personal.

Photo albums and thrift shop clothes are my main collections/hobbies, but over the course of my life I’ve learned that they can become a burden to manage. I had one album that I started in the ‘70s that had been falling apart for years.  It was a mix of pictures, some historic that I took from my mother’s albums. I decided to get a new 3-ring album and, working from the old one, make one album that reviewed my whole life.

Every picture I chose for my life book represented a story and a whole span of time. I had an emotional connection to each picture I chose, some scanned, some collected from my overflow pictures, some from my mother’s old albums. I put them in chronological order as best as I could.

What would you grab if your house was on fire? I had always thought ‘my photo albums’ but they were all over the house, even in the attic, and too many to save. Now I knew what to go for if I had to leave my house fast or had to move to a smaller place.

I love my life book, and the life review I went through while making it was deeply meaningful.

But soon after I finished the project, I realized I wanted an even smaller life book, one I could fit in the corner of a suitcase, one I could take anywhere, one I could browse through with grandchildren while introducing them to their ancestors, one that has back stories to every picture, one that I imagine will bring me comfort through life changes.

Now I’m not so attached to my photo album collection, but I am to my life books.

I like to distill life down to its essence through poetry and photography.

This is what I do. ________Our World Tuesday