2:07 PM
I stare at the pile of 4x6 photos, trying to muster up the gumption to start sorting. Over the last ten years I have fallen woefully behind on getting photos printed, and in a manic spurt of motivation, I have printed two years worth of photos all at once. They arrived in a big jumble, and I must pick through them one by one, separating them out by year and month, and then put them into albums.
There are no shortcuts here, so I sit crosslegged on the floor and start twelve piles, one for each month of a year that was finished a decade ago. As the photos slowly start resembling chronological order, I find myself lingering over each one a little longer. There is one of that time we went to the zoo when my oldest was a baby. There is one of his first Thanksgiving, and I can see how his hair stood straight up in a golden fuzz around his sweet face.
I watch myself in these photos, as my belly goes from flat to pumpkin-esque, as my next child grows inside. Then there she is, squinted eyes and puckered newborn lips surrounded by dark hair against the hospital sheets.
Before I know it, not just one hour but several have passed. The photos are sorted, and I have painstakingly put them into albums. An entire day's work, and I've only improved the status of this ridiculously delayed photo project by 25 months. It took me six months to get organized and motivated enough to accomplish even this, and I feel that these albums will never be complete.
But I will keep trying, I'll keep finding pockets of time to sort through our family's history and preserve it as my kids grow and change more with every year. Even in this one day, I've watched my first and second babies go from a bundle in the hospital to chasing and popping bubbles in the backyard, from a black and white outline on an ultrasound to crawling across the floor with a two-toothed grin and sparkling eyes. I want to watch the rest of my children join our family in photos, I want to watch as my husband and I gain a few gray hairs and laugh lines, as these albums are slowly completed, one by one, year by year.
And when this season of parenting children in our own home is complete, when I close the last album containing their childhood, I hope I can say I we all enjoyed it to the full.
Stop.
i enjoyed this. Reminds me of looking through our old photo albums at home. We don't do that so much anymore do we? FMF21
What a beautiful capture, Callie, of what it's like to be a Mom - savoring the moments; glancing back and gazing forward; yet always living in the present. Inspiring!
So hard to think about the days when the kiddos will be gone. I started scrapbooks for them when they were babies and I didn't get very far. My daughter is soon to be 19 and my son is 16...time moves quickly.
Love this. It brings back memories of a similar project I finally got around to tackling about two years ago.
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