A SCRAPBOOK LETTER

 

"Some paint with acrylics, I like to paint with words." Ruby Neumann

My Mother's Day gift for my Mom this year was a scrapbook of my sister's single life.  It was far from all inclusive.  I am sure I left a lot of good stories.   But I wanted to capture what I saw as some of the more pivotal moments of her first two decades on this planet.  

This project started last year, but in reality, it was a dream I had long before he died.  I wanted to write her a book of the stories of our childhood that she seemed to have forgotten.  Her mind wasn't a storage house of the past.  When I asked her if she remembered certain events, she would often reply with a "No".  Somehow I still felt the need to remember those things that she had forgotten.  

I started this scrapbook as something for Mom to remember her daughter, but it became a letter to my sister.  So my Mom is the fly on the wall of that conversation I wish I could have had with Jennifer.   I poured my heart out in one month and was pretty proud of what I had written.  I think I got a lot of good stories out and Mom is already making her way through the book.  I complimented it with pictures because pictures often tell more of the story than words do.  I think it's the pictures that bring the mind back to the moment,  the words just fill in the details.   

I picked up another scrapbook at Dollarama because I felt like I wasn't finished with the story telling.  I have a few ideas, but I still want to talk to my sister.  Mom already reminded me of a story that didn't make it into the first volume.  Maybe there are more of those moments.  I also want to bring more of me and my story in to the next book.  What stories do I still have in me that my sister and my mother didn't have access too.  Maybe there is some more of my life that can help my mother.  I haven't started it yet.  I am just perusing ideas right now.  

“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”  Winnie the Pooh