SoCS – wee

Linda provides us with a prompt to write a SoCS blog. This week she says…
“Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wee.” Use the word “wee” or find a word that contains it and use it in your post. Have fun!”

I have been working on redoing my photograph scrapbooks for weeks and weeks. I had more than one goal in mind.

I am attempting to downsize things in my home. I hope to move to a one story  much smaller house in the near future.  One reason to redo the scrapbooks, is to have fewer of them to move. Another reason to redo them is to gift some others albums.

When I was at the height of my joyful scrapbooking addiction, I was making 6 albums at a time. I would take the pictures I liked and make myself a photo album, one for my mom, one for my aunt, one for each of my daughters, and one for my in-laws. Silly me. I never used the same layout on any two. I wanted each to be unique. This meant more time, more creative energy, and more special pages. I loved it.

The hours I allowed for scrapbooking were reduced over time and I created less books. Eventually, I was just making them for myself,  my mom, and my aunt.
After my mom passed away, I was in charge of cleaning out her house in just a few days. I took all the albums I had made for her and brought them home.

Now, five years later, I am finally going through those albums. My aunt passed away in January and I have the albums I made for her too. I made the decision to go through all the albums to consolidate, reduce, and re-gift pictures as I see fit.

This has been ongoing for quite awhile now. It is very strange reliving memories from my albums. I have been moved to weep over so many changes and joys in the family. Most of my early years scrapbooks include multiple years in one album. Then came the grandkids. I had four albums, each with 50 two-sided pages, for the first years of my grandson and granddaughter. I took pictures like crazy. This was back when the pictures were a total guess as to how many were duds. The negatives were overtaking box after box in my scrapbooking room.

Months ago, I tossed all the mish mash of negatives. I was sure I wouldn’t need them. Well…. I knew I didn’t have the energy to look at each of those negatives to try to figure out the year they belonged to. My desire is to downsize anyway, not to add more to my stacks.

Now I sit and weep as I look at the pictures of my mom with my grandkids. She loved them so. She loved being their GG. My emotions are varied. I am grateful that my mom was able to meet all four of her great-grandchildren. I am grateful that I took them to AZ to visit her. I am grateful that they got to know her. But of course, I am a greedy woman who wanted more time with my mom.  I want more pictures to scrapbook that include my mom.

I hope that when my grandkids want to see pictures of their GG, that they will enjoy my albums. They will have the visual reminders of who she was and how much both she, and I love them.

I am allowing myself to relive the happy moments. I am proud that I have a few pictures from my high school graduation, my college graduation, and my master’s degree graduation. The high school and college graduation photos of my daughters bring me such joy. Now, my first grandchild has graduated from high school. Eventually, when I catch up on the tens years of photos I have not scrapbooked, I will proudly add those pictures to a new album.

This chore/activity/hobby/pastime can easily take over my life. I am trying to make sure that I stop each day before I overdo it. It is sometimes emotional overload and sometimes physical overload that causes me to stop.

I get joy from the process and the product. I am a sentimental person who is happy to look through pictures time and time again.