some questions lately

i've had some interesting questions posed to me lately. ones that at first just seemed like easy answers, no biggies. but the more i think about them the more i have to say about them and so i thought i'd put them here. ya know, my blog. the one that used to be filled with this sort of thing until i started using it simply as a what-we-did-in-not-very-much-detail-but-with-pictures-to-fill-in-the-blanks-sort-of-journal-of-days.

and that brings me to one of the questions. ren asked on my last blog post in the comments section about how i could remember all these things with the dates and such. well, i don't. that's the short answer. the truth is that when i sit down to write a long post like that i grab the calendar and my checkbook. and i open up kodak easyshare. with these three things i reassemble the events that have taken place in however long it's been since i last blogged. i do this because i want to get this stuff down to have something to look back on. and i need things to help me remember it all. my calendar has all sorts of stuff written down on it. then i match it up with my checkbook which will usually have something on the same date that will spur more memories of what happened on a particular day. and add that to the pictures and i can pretty much put down some semblance of what we've done.

but herein lies a problem. and this is the thing that got me thinking about this needing to be a blog post. what about the moments, whole days when nothing is planned (therefore not written down on the calendar), where i don't take any pictures, or go anywhere and spend money that might be recorded in my checkbook?? what then? what about those lost moments?? well, they're lost. end of story. that's how my memory is. i sometimes think about that on quiet homey days when the kids are doing their own things and i just get to sit and watch them and enjoy being in the moment. i think...i need to go get the camera!! sometimes i do. but more often, i don't. i don't want to interrupt the naturalness of that moment by turning it into something i need to document. and although i love documenting things, i hold back. sometimes.

awhile back i started thinking about childhood memories. how i love taking pictures so that i will be able to remember things. so my kids will one day be able to recall the events that made up their childhoods. it got so bad that i wanted to document every single moment. then i had this startling thought: what if, even though you don't remember something, it still makes up big chunks and pieces of who you are. well duh!! ever heard of suppressed childhood memories laura??? of course...i've got tons of them...don't recall but a handful of memories of my childhood. but i'd always thought of that sort of thing in regards to the bad stuff. how even not remembering it can have deep and lasting effects. so what about the wonderful times. the tiny moments of pure joy and simplicity of being a child. of being happy. regardless of whether or not anyone remembers it. it is a piece of the puzzle. my kids have tons of happy (and i'm sure not so happy) pieces of their puzzle inside of them that they probably don't even remember. but it makes up who they are. i'm not doing a very good job of describing this moment of clarity i had. but it was so huge for me. that all the little good stuff doesn't have to be remembered forevermore to be a part of who we are. did i go in enough circles with that for ya??

so that's that. i try to keep track of the bigger events in our lives. but the small, quiet ones, i've learned to just soak up in the moment...and know that regardless of my memory it is building a happy nest inside of me. inside of my kids. and sometimes...i simply facebook about them!!! ha ha ha ha ha (that's hysterical laughter in case you didn't know). no pictures necessary.

i've got to get ready for park day now. so the second big question i was going to talk about will have to wait until tomorrow!!

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