Memories

I've spent the majority of my spring break scrap booking. I sorted my photos, got everything ready, and began pasting the photos onto the pages. About 1/2 way through the 2nd book it hit me: the memories.

The memories of high school, college, boyfriends, friends, family, and kids. All of the memories were good, as is often the case with pictures. Pictures of bad times aren't often taken and my pictures are no different. They're all of happy times, of fun, games, and togetherness. Then I realized that my best memories are not of high school, college, boyfriends, friends, or family. No, they are of the kids. The kids I have had the pleasure to spend the last 8 years working with. The kids who I watched grow up, watched as they maneuvered through various stages, watched as they cracked their first smile, rolled over for the first time, learned to crawl, and took those first tentative steps into toddler hood.

Those are my best memories. The scrapbooks are just a way of putting them down on paper. I have a tendency to write on every page of a scrapbook. Write about the pictures, the events leading up to them, the events after. Telling a story if you will. I'm finding that the pages filled with writing are those pages plastered with pictures of children. Sure I have stuff written on the pages where pictures of my friends, family, and boyfriends are pasted. But those pages don't have the sincerity in the writing like the pages of kids do.

I have truly been given a gift. A gift to work with children, a gift of parents entrusting me with the care of their children, and the gift of a camera. But these gifts are bittersweet in a way. The children grow up, the families move, the camera breaks, the parents no longer need my services. Then comes the dreaded time when the children no longer remember me. They don't have the memories I do. They don't know my face, my name, my voice. They were too young when I cared for them to remember me. It was hard the first time that happened to me. But it is a fact of life when you work with young children. At least, when all is said and done, I have the memories. Memories that I hope to never forget, but if I do, I will always have the pictures and words written this spring break of 2008.