Scrapbooks

Several years back, my friend J introduced me to scrapbooking and I've been a convert ever since. It's an excuse to be creative (with paper and stickers! it's like I'm 8 again), with plenty of opportunity to record stories about my boy, so really, it's no surprise that I enjoy it so much.

All of my scrapbooking was about my family, and when my family got suddenly smaller, it was very difficult for me to return to the books. I'd look at pictures of the three of us and wonder, "was she getting ready to leave when this picture was made?" I'd wonder if the happiness I saw in the photos was a lie and I'd ponder when the deceptions began.

And then there was the obvious irony of the fact that I tended to scrapbook major life moments.......there just aren't any stickers to mark the day that your family falls apart. So, though my friend E suggested I take up ironic scrapbooking, instead I just stopped.

I still collected pictures, paper, and stickers. In the abstract, I thought about the things in my life with JT that was worthy of recording. I took to making cards, which didn't require me to relive painful moments. This blog was an enormously helpful creative outlet. But soon enough, JT started to ask why I wasn't making the books anymore. His missed looking at the pages as a record of his life.

So when J, who started this all, invited me to join her at a scrapbook day this weekend, it seemed like a good idea to take the plunge. JT was away for the weekend and I had last made pages in my book in February 2006; three months before everything suddenly changed. So my first task on Saturday was to record memories from 2006. I figured that it might be difficult, but the only way through it is to do it. And so I did.

Ten hours and twenty pages later (!), I've got myself to the summer of 2007. I have plans to finish up 2007 and head on into 2008. When he came home on Sunday afternoon, JT was thrilled to look at all the new pages and I was happy to see his enjoyment. Though it was sometimes a painful reminder of how much my life has changed difficult, I'm glad that I have re-claimed it.