The other albums are collections of childhood photos my
mother gave me years ago. She was a master photo album-maker throughout the
years of my childhood, keeping visual records of every trip we took, various
childhood milestones, birthday parties and ski races, soccer camps and hiking
trips – all compiled by year and labeled neatly. And then, several years ago,
she took these apart, reassembled them by child, and gifted books to my
brothers and me.
I once had great aspirations of keeping similar photo albums
– thus, the college and immediately post-college years represented on my shelf.
But then life got busier – and digital photos came into being. While I love the
ease of taking and sharing images now, I rarely have them printed out anymore,
let alone put neatly into albums with each event carefully labeled.
My husband and I were married 15 years ago, right around the
time digital was really pushing film photography out of the way. In our bedroom,
I have a box of wedding photos – something like 600 hundred of them – along
with a lovely album that may someday contain those photos. And, while my older
two children have a lovely baby book, my youngest has envelopes of photos
somewhere that I may someday locate and organize into a book.
But – every year, each kid gets a book for his or her
birthday. The photos are not individually printed and carefully placed between
sticky-backed paperboard and clingy plastic cover, nor are they tucked by those
little corner tabs onto pages. Rather, I download my photos onto a website,
compile them there onto virtual pages, and then, through some photo site magic,
they are printed directly onto pages, bound into a personalized book, and shipped
to my doorstep.
This is not quite the same as the old photo albums, of
course. The kids won’t be able, decades from now, to pull out a photo and turn
it over to see if there are names or a date penciled carefully onto the back.
But they serve as a record, nonetheless, and they have become a beloved
birthday tradition – for both the receivers and the giver.
The kids like to turn the pages – quickly on the first look,
then more slowly – to remember what they’ve done over the past 12 months, where
they’ve been, and with whom. Like the photos from my childhood, these images
show soccer games and skiing buddies, treks through the mountains, family trips
and gatherings, sleepovers and time spent with friends. There are often sighs
of happy contentment and a few giggles as the kids turn through the year just
passed.
Making the books is time-consuming, and it is often
agonizing to whittle the hundreds of digital photos I’ve taken over the course
of a year down to a much smaller number that will fit within a book. But I love
to go through those photos and remember, too. It’s a reminder to take a deep
breath and enjoy these moments, even as they seem to fly by.
Often, on their birthdays, or after the birthday chaos has
quieted some, the kids will go into the other room, pull out the collection of
books from earlier birthdays, and flip through those as well. I think they like
to remember how little they once were – to them it seems like forever ago, to
me just the other day – to see traditions unfold across the years and new
adventures mixed in.
Sometimes, one of my children will mention a place I’ve been
to or a person I’ve shared stories with, and I’m able to pull a dusty album off
the shelf and find a photo of that time, place, or personality. I hope these
birthday books stand the test of time and go with my children wherever they
wander. Then, someday, they can pull a book off a shelf, remember and share the
stories held within.
Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay was published in the Littleton Record as Meghan's Close to Home column on February 14, 2020.
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