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A life, scrapbooked

This week some workers at my school found a treasure trove of scrapbooks in a house that is due to be razed to make room for a new campus building.

The house was left to our school in a will.  There is some sort of very involved story with the house … an alum of my school was married to a man, and she wanted the house left to the school.  She died and her husband remarried and lived in the house for many more years.  He and his second wife apparently committed suicide together because one of them was terminally ill.  When he died, the house was then left to the school, in accordance with the first wife’s wishes.

Now, I can promise you that I don’t have all the facts of this story straight, but I’ve got enough of them to know that the story is complicated, sad, romantic, very poignant.

The scrapbooks are mostly from travels in the 1980s and early 1990s, all meticulously prepared.  Ticket stubs, itineraries, menus, hotel stationery, post cards, photos, newspaper clippings, advertisements and much more, all labeled with an ink pen in a woman’s elegant handwriting.

Because the house will soon be leveled, our maintenance crew is cleaning it out completely.  They brought the 18 scrapbooks to the library (where I work), and our librarian put them on a cart and invited the community to come peruse them.

Normally, this would be stuff I’d love, but instead of being fascinated with them, they are freaking me out.  To see so many scrapbooks in one place, all of them there to be perused by strangers to the people who made them, depressed me.

Co-workers filed in and out of the library all day yesterday and again today.  They hoisted books of interest to library tables to flip through, vicariously enjoying trips to exotic locales.  Everyone was chatting about the extensive collection, about how many hours it took to assemble them.  Labors of love.

But I couldn’t stop thinking about how material things cannot possibly go with us when we die.  All the hours spent on those books, all the special memories compiled, just to be shared with people the travelers didn’t even know.  I thought of how my own to-do lists include reminders not only to create scrapbooks, but to sort through pictures, print pictures, edit family videos, post it all on the Internet.

What will happen to my recorded memories when I die one day?  Will my family enjoy them, or will they just be moldy old albums, interesting conversation pieces … is it a waste of time to record memories in pictures?  in albums? on tape?  Should we be spending more time experiencing life in the present moment instead of working so passionately to record it?

I think I was extra-sensitive about these scrapbooks because Monday was the three-year anniversary of my step-father’s death.  The scrapbooks made me remember holding my step-father’s hand after he died, as I looked around the room at all his treasured possessions, thinking that wherever he was going, he sure wasn’t taking all those books, photos, trinkets and decorations with him.  I couldn’t understand his death, but I could understand the this-world permanence of those objects hovering all around us.

I wanted to be happy about the moment the scrapbooks provided — it was actually kind of neat to see other teachers I haven’t chatted with in awhile, coming into the library, all of us sharing easy moments over objects of mutual interest.

When a fellow co-worker brought one of the albums back to the library, saying that it was making her office smell moldy, I knew I needed to call it a day.  I left work, stopping off to have coffee with a dear friend.  And then home to my family and some nice warm spaghetti.

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Random things about myself

So, I got tagged in one of those notes in Facebook, and I don’t usually find time to play along and respond.  But I had one second this morning and did it and thought it was fun.

1) Come up with 25 things about you, it does not matter what you pick as long as they are true.
2) You then have to tag 25 people, including the person who tagged you.  (I’m also posting this in Facebook, and I’m tagging people there.)
So, here goes:

1.) For over 20 years, I saved my Barbies and Barbie trunk, full of clothes, to pass on to my children, in case I decided to have children.  I lugged them from house to house, East Coast to West Coast.
2.) My children broke the Barbies the first time they played with them.
3.) In the 90s, I used to collect children’s picture books. I had a little note card for each book, detaling the themes and how the book would be useful in the classroom.  (Can you say “nerd?”)
4.) One of my closest friends wrote a wonderful picture book called The Giant Hug.
5.) The laptop I’m using doesn’t type the number five, so I always have to copy and paste it.  Sometimes password fields don’t accept a paste, so then I’m SOL.
6.) I’m using Facebook to get connected with some of my cousins in Spain and am therefore practicing my Spanish (in writing, at least)!  This is good because my checks turn hot and get very red every time I try to speak Spanish.
7.) Every day, I miss my grandmother.
8.) I didn’t always think I’d have kids, but I did think that if I were to have kids, that I’d have twins.  (and I did!)
9.) The album that turned me on to the Beatles was Revolver, and the album that turned me on to Bob Dylan was Blood on the Tracks.
10.) Once, and only for a short time, I was an auctioneer.
11.) I love Valentine’s Day and jangly bracelets.  They don’t have to be expensive.  Just jangly.
12.) I cannot stand coconut shavings or water chestnuts.
13.) When I put dirty dishes in the sink, I have a hard time remembering to put water in them, and it drives my husband crazy.
14.) I love to play games and do crafts with my daughters, but I’m not much good at make-believe games, even though I pretended a lot when I was little.
15.) In gym class as a kid, I was dangerous with any type of equipment, like field hockey sticks or lacrosse sticks.
16.) I take modern dance classes, and I want to learn to do flamenco.
17.) When I was in college in the late 80s, I was very happy with my electronic typewriter and did not understand the relevance of computers.  I thought it was a fad that would die.
18.) My favorite book is Stuart Little.
19.) Lately, my favorite song is The Kinks’ “This Time Tomorrow,” but that could change, um, tomorrow.
20.) For a long time, I have been fascinated with the Civil Rights movement.  Lately, as I’ve been searching for a way to talk about Martin Luther King Day with my daughters, I have been learning a little more about Ruby Bridges.
21.) Sometimes, I think I enjoy my kids’ toys as much as they do.  Especially Playmobil.
22.) My husband and I can’t wait for the next Harry Potter movie to come out.
23.) I am a breast cancer survivor.
24.) When I had down-days during cancer treatment, it would cheer me up to think about the many ways that we are all inter-connected, how we all matter to each other.  For example, I am a mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, aunt, friend, teacher, writer/blogger/journalist, dancer, confidante, helper, lots of things … What are you?
25.) I am happy to be here.