The Method of Memory Making
I've been addicted to Instagram lately. I love me some filters, no doubt about it. There is this amazing draw to pull up a snapshot in that silly app, flip through every single option and see how it morphs my photo, how it edits the 'film.' I love that they all have cutesy titles too, "Rise" and "Toaster," "Earlybird" and "Nashville." It works well to have them cataloged that way, lined up for me to choose how to modify the life I captured for a moment.
My brain works this way too I think. Maybe that's why I love the app so much, because I can see through these few clicks into my own past, can look at how simple a moment I grabbed and embellished, cropped and filtered into a perfect memory. How do you make your memories? I hadn't thought about it much until this spring. I began reviewing events and days in my life and saw them through completely different eyes when I realized that in the remembering, I was changing the image.
Take this one: It had been a rough night, a sleepless one waking up, checking a six year old's blood sugar and then managing a fussing and overheated four year old. Not too soon after settling back abed, in waddled the two year old, clambering up the sideboard and onto my mattress, crocheted blanket in tow. Thirty-four weeks and four days pregnant and growing by the minute, my belly took up my half of the bed already, never mind those extra two feet that now pressed into my back, that hot little body nestled next to me, threatening to wake if I attempted to get more comfortable myself. The morning came too quickly and with it the necessary tasks of the day- feed, dress, and load three little girls plus myself and my own plus one, into the truck and drive to town for a work meeting, stopping only to drop the girls at a daycare along the way. Somehow it wasn't an easy transition that day. My morning fell apart fast and I could feel my calm and collectedness slipping through my fingers as I tracked down mismatched mittens and lone boots. I zipped three jackets, heaved a sigh when my own wouldn't zip, and fought the despair when finding that I needed to wrestle two out of three girls into carseats. We made it four minutes down the road when the four year old unbuckled herself, demanding something unreasonable. I pulled over and started over, wrestling and wrenching her belt across her lap, realizing it was dangerously close to lunchtime and we were an hour from our destination, with no picnic packed. My phone rang and I answered, handing my oldest her blood sugar meter, asked her to prepare to check herself so we could get drive-through. Pouting ensued and my breaths came too fast, the panic rising in my brain and the beating of my heart pushing me closer to the edge. My friend hung on the line while I drove, coached my girl through the check, pulled off to the McDonald's and ordered some happy meals.
I can calmly recall this day now, sitting here in my quiet office, a lifetime having passed since that snowy lunchtime meltdown just six months ago. I can look back at it knowingly, that memory having been etched once but the edges softened since life changed so drastically. I know that on that day, when those girls were happily sharing their happy meals and I should have been breathing a sigh of relief, I was near hysterics with my friend on the phone. Exhausted, hungry myself, overheated and yet already so sick of the January cold, I had tears streaming down my face.
"What if I can't do this," I asked her. "We are a few weeks away from having four kids...how will I manage to do this everyday but with four?" I had lost it and when I look back, I can see myself driving and fretting, the anxiety overwhelming and the worry ringing the memory. The emotions weigh the frame, set it indelibly in my mind, and yet I know that the experience would have been forgotten if my son had lived, would have been replaced by some other difficult day.
There are other, better days that I remember too, like hauling my four year old to her birthday photos with her sisters, getting them dressed and smiling and clean-faced for the camera. Afterward, taking them to eat at a restaurant, all of us girls. It's the same period of time, the same pregnant mama and cute kids. My confidence radiated this day, perhaps on a better base of sleep and with a table of food already set. Yet the drama unfolded similarly, two running to the bathroom alone, one coming back to sit with her sister while I ran in the stall for just a moment to give the insulin shot. In the meantime, the youngest had pooped in her diaper, standing up in her high chair and announcing it to the crowd on my way back from the bathroom. Her sister had dirt dessert smeared all over her face and as I paid the bill, I smiled. Quickly we marched to the truck and I searched for a spare diaper. Finding none, I wrapped my sweet yet stinky girl in a blanket, butt naked and then buckled everyone in. That hour drive home was blissful, all three asleep in the dusky twilight that ushered us on the highway. Never mind that all hell broke loose when we got home and woke them all up, only to try to put them back to bed. The snapshot I hold dear is the funny one, the one where we successfully took professional photos and had polite dinner conversation then proceeded to poop in public and still look classy!
I'm looking forward to making other memories and taking millions more pictures. I am not sure how I will know which ones will be important...I never know when I'm looking through the viewfinder that the image will be perfect, and sometimes, even when it isn't, I still value it looking back and reminiscing, especially through the filters of the life that is to come.
My brain works this way too I think. Maybe that's why I love the app so much, because I can see through these few clicks into my own past, can look at how simple a moment I grabbed and embellished, cropped and filtered into a perfect memory. How do you make your memories? I hadn't thought about it much until this spring. I began reviewing events and days in my life and saw them through completely different eyes when I realized that in the remembering, I was changing the image.
Take this one: It had been a rough night, a sleepless one waking up, checking a six year old's blood sugar and then managing a fussing and overheated four year old. Not too soon after settling back abed, in waddled the two year old, clambering up the sideboard and onto my mattress, crocheted blanket in tow. Thirty-four weeks and four days pregnant and growing by the minute, my belly took up my half of the bed already, never mind those extra two feet that now pressed into my back, that hot little body nestled next to me, threatening to wake if I attempted to get more comfortable myself. The morning came too quickly and with it the necessary tasks of the day- feed, dress, and load three little girls plus myself and my own plus one, into the truck and drive to town for a work meeting, stopping only to drop the girls at a daycare along the way. Somehow it wasn't an easy transition that day. My morning fell apart fast and I could feel my calm and collectedness slipping through my fingers as I tracked down mismatched mittens and lone boots. I zipped three jackets, heaved a sigh when my own wouldn't zip, and fought the despair when finding that I needed to wrestle two out of three girls into carseats. We made it four minutes down the road when the four year old unbuckled herself, demanding something unreasonable. I pulled over and started over, wrestling and wrenching her belt across her lap, realizing it was dangerously close to lunchtime and we were an hour from our destination, with no picnic packed. My phone rang and I answered, handing my oldest her blood sugar meter, asked her to prepare to check herself so we could get drive-through. Pouting ensued and my breaths came too fast, the panic rising in my brain and the beating of my heart pushing me closer to the edge. My friend hung on the line while I drove, coached my girl through the check, pulled off to the McDonald's and ordered some happy meals.
I can calmly recall this day now, sitting here in my quiet office, a lifetime having passed since that snowy lunchtime meltdown just six months ago. I can look back at it knowingly, that memory having been etched once but the edges softened since life changed so drastically. I know that on that day, when those girls were happily sharing their happy meals and I should have been breathing a sigh of relief, I was near hysterics with my friend on the phone. Exhausted, hungry myself, overheated and yet already so sick of the January cold, I had tears streaming down my face.
"What if I can't do this," I asked her. "We are a few weeks away from having four kids...how will I manage to do this everyday but with four?" I had lost it and when I look back, I can see myself driving and fretting, the anxiety overwhelming and the worry ringing the memory. The emotions weigh the frame, set it indelibly in my mind, and yet I know that the experience would have been forgotten if my son had lived, would have been replaced by some other difficult day.
I'm looking forward to making other memories and taking millions more pictures. I am not sure how I will know which ones will be important...I never know when I'm looking through the viewfinder that the image will be perfect, and sometimes, even when it isn't, I still value it looking back and reminiscing, especially through the filters of the life that is to come.
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