When our kids were younger, I used to trail them with the camera — whether it was my “good” camera or my phone, it didn’t matter. Things kind of tapered off when our son hit that phase when he no longer wanted to be in pictures… or be embarrassed by his embarrassing mom… or be inconvenienced by his mom trying to preserve memories… or smile (yay for teenagers, am I right?). Maybe it was for the best that the pace slowed; a few more years of being the object of constant attention and our daughter’s ego would’ve been bigger than Texas.
In the back of my mind — though I love photography — I always knew I was taking the photos as proof of lives well lived. As our babies grew up, I knew I’d always have photographic evidence that they were once small and unhardened by the world — that their wide eyes took in incredible things as simple as homemade birthday cakes and as grand as the literal Grand Canyon and Great Wall of China. I’d preserved all these moments in stills that would always be mine and be theirs even longer. Images they’d look back on fondly and share with people in their future, worthy of learning about all these special pieces of their past.
So, imagine my absolute devastation when, while chatting casually with our kids one day recently about a fond memory made in California when they were roughly 5 and 3 years old, they (audible gasp, palpable shock) didn’t remember it.
Always reluctant to cut my losses and give up, I dug in with reminders in hopes it would jog a memory — no luck. So, I did what any elder millennial would do. I opened the Facebook app and pulled up the album I knew contained the exact memory in question. I still can’t be sure if the photos actually sparked the memory or if they just wanted mom to leave them alone so they could go back to what they were doing, but I got a few laughs, a “Whoa,” and some very invested swiping through the photos before we got to “Oh yeah!”
Unseen Photos and Epiphanies
Anyone who also loses sleep overanalyzing things will appreciate this late-night epiphany: Several nights later, while trying to fall asleep, my eyes popped open. All the photos were worth nothing if the kids never saw them. We grew up watching and rewatching home videos on VHS tapes and flipping through printed photos in albums. Quite possibly the most nostalgic part of my teens was picking up photos from the drugstore two to three days after dropping off film or a disposable camera. Even that three-day pause was enough to fog clear memories. We’d sit in our cars in the parking lot and shuffle through the stack (always doubles for sharing, right, millennials?) with all the laughs and “Oh yeahs” I’d just gotten from our kids a few days prior.
I have such vivid memories of my childhood, and we all know that’s not because I have a stellar memory. It’s because I was constantly reminded of things I did as a child, so those memories grew with me — intertwined in the fabric of who I am, my stories to share with anyone I choose.
Game Plan
Not wanting to just have thousands of photos of my kids that they’ll one day look at with only questions, I now know that taking the photos was only part of the task. I have to make sure they see them and see them often. My husband and I have to tell the stories behind the moment and tell them over and over again until they can cut us off and finish the stories themselves. I theorize that this is harder in the digital age because they have so much competing for their attention, but also because everything is stored on hard drives and phones and in social media albums.
Thankfully, digitization has made some aspects of sharing stories and photos easier. Those annual memories that pop up on phones and social media are perfect segues into a conversation about what we were doing five years ago on this day. And we know all of our photos are somewhere and accessible all the time. While I’m sure most of my childhood pictures are somewhere, I don’t know where or what shape they’re in.
Moving forward, I’m making it a priority to remind our kids, through photos, videos and stories, where they came from, where they’ve been, what they’ve done and how they’ve changed the world — my world — in so many hilarious, important and beautiful ways. I never want them to forget any of it (especially the really expensive vacations — kidding, kidding). More than that, I want them to own these memories the way that I still own mine. I want them to grow with these memories — the way a tree can grow around something, wrap it up and fully encompass it. I want these memories to impact their worldview, how they treat other people, the goals they set, the stories they share with anyone worthy of knowing these little pieces of them and remind them how to be silly and let a laugh light up their face as much as possible (even when they’re one day an embarrassing and inconvenient grown-up).
