My Children s Journals

Transcription

1 My Children s Journals When I learned that I was going to have my first child in 2003, I knew I had to join the digital age, which meant purchasing a digital camera. I had been one to be slow on the uptake of new technology (having switched to compact disks in 2000, well beyond the point of useful cassette tapes), but that was how I rolled. Why rush into new technology? Well, the soon to be child seemed like a good reason to upgrade my photographic ambitions to the current decade. After all, it wasn t the 20th century anymore! I loved the digital photograph taker. It was amazing! I could take photo after photo, in rapid succession, to try to get the perfect shot. No worries about developing charges or keeping negatives to make reprints or enlargements! I could just snap photo after photo and catch the perfect shot. How awesome! The new digital camera was amazing! I loved taking photographs of everything in life, especially babies. My daughter (ARK) was born and I took 753 photos between February and December. Maybe they weren t all of my daughter, but most were. I took 1,077 additional photos in I printed maybe four photographs by the end of They were really quality photos, hence their printing. But there had to be more photos that should have been printed out of the more than 1,800 photos taken in two years, right? What about the other photos? They re just digital sitting on the hard drive. Potential pixels, but just 0 s and 1 s. When I learned that I was going to have my second child in 2005, I knew I had to get back to the physical world, which meant purchasing a journal. I had never been one to journal in my life; tried once or twice as part of school assignments, but it never

2 took. It s been something I ve thought about from time to time and something I liked doing when I tried it. I had to start printing just some of those photos. Because of an unfortunate event with my photos from my younger years. Between the time of getting our new digital camera and the birth of my second child, I moved. That means things were put into boxes for later unpacking. It was early in the moving process with boxes stacked in the garage in disarray and without thought. They were just unloaded there for processing. I was away for the day. I came home to water gushing from our garage, inexplicably. When I got inside, I discovered our washer had blown a hose and everything in the garage, on the ground, was soaked. Inches of water backed up behind the door. One of the boxes contained all my photographs from childhood through digital age. It was on the bottom. It was hit hard and most of the things in the box couldn t be saved. If you ve seen a stack of printed photographs get wet, then dry, you know what I m talking about. If you haven t seen it, there is no saving the photos. They glue together. Just a brick of photo paper with images pressed between. The negatives were long gone. It was rough, but life. When I found out I was going to have a second child, I was absolutely astounded by how quickly the last two years had happened. It seemed like time travel had occurred and here I was with a two year old daughter and another on the way. Plus, having lost my physical reminders of the past and feeling like digital photographs were useless unless they were printed somewhere in the physical form that was the impetus for decided to buy a journal for my daughter. I researched journals on the internet. It was 2006 and thankfully I had caught up with the internet. I wanted a leather journal that could be reused. What s the use in having a beautiful leather

3 journal that sits on a shelf after it s filled? That didn t make sense to me. Buying one journal after another wasn t what I wanted. If I was going to get a journal, it had to be refillable so it retained the possibility of travelling around the world if I gave it to my child. It couldn t be limited to the number of physical pages contained in a leather-clad journal. I m still not sure why I had such a strong opinion of the refillability at the time, but that was an essential point. It had to be refillable. I don t think I thought further than one refill at the time. I found Renaissance Art through the internet and purchased my first journal for ARK in 2006, before her birthday and before her brother (JCK) was born. The intentions when the beautiful refillable leather journal from Seattle arrived were so ambitious. We ll scribble crayons in the journal every day! We ll record ARK growing up so fast! It will be great! I gave ARK the journal for her second birthday. I committed to printing out some of those digital photographs at work and actually putting them in the journal. That was something that I felt strongly about based on the loss of my photos. I fell into a weekly routine where I would download the photos from the previous week and put them into a format that would fit the 8.5 x 5.5 size for the journals. I would print them out on the color printer, cut them to size, and include one for each week of the year. Extra pages were taken by Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Easter, July 4th, Christmas, and New Year s Eve. On the left blank side, I would scribble some crayons on the page with daughter while trying to keep up with JCK. Or maybe paste some stickers. On the ruled right side, I would write down the highlights of the week, then attach the photo collage from that week. It kind of settled into a weekly habit in the first year. A Tuesday evening ritual. Print photos at work and enjoy sharing them with the

4 family at dinner, scribble on the left blank page with ARK, write about the previous week on the right side, and then attach photos. It was interesting that the refillable insert was almost filled after one year, right around ARK s first birthday. I decided that the insert would represent one year in ARK s life from her second to third birthday. There were a few blank pages left, but it seemed appropriate to change it after one year. I had purchased a refillable insert with the original journal so I decided to slip in the refill for my daughter s third birthday. The journal refill inserts have flimsy covers in order to be placed in the leather cover. The journal inserts are unattractive when you look them. It is by necessity, and it s unfortunate. Those are the memories that you want to keep in something important like a leather-bound journal. Ha! I get it now, but still maintain my original sentiment of wanting the journal to circumnavigate the globe in the future. Or at least travel farther and wider than I have in my life. Maybe bring a story or two back to share and entertain me in the future. What might my children see? The first journal insert was precious. It looked so unsubstantial from the outside but held so much within. I had a piece of fabric embroidered with my daughter s initials and Volume I at the bottom. I measured and cut cardboard and used spray glue and somehow put together a fairly respectable purple-clad embroidered covered journal. It was pretty cool. I felt guilty for not getting JCK a journal to match ARK s journal. He should certainly have one too. I was really enjoying working in the journal with ARK. I got through that by rationalizing that I would buy him one for his second birthday also. I had to be fair. His arrived in time for his birthday and it was double the fun

5 working in the journals with both kids. Around that time, I learned that I was going to have my third child (DOK). DOK got a matching refillable journal for his second birthday, too. I had to be fair. That was almost 10 years ago. For a time, I hand wrote in each of the three journals and we kept to the weekly habit quite well. That was before school and homework and soccer and all the other distractions of growing kids. The frequency of entries is not quite the same today. It s more like a monthly entry with the kids, drawing self-portraits and what-have-you (our go to favorite is stained glass) on the left un-ruled page. Important stories are included and all the photos from the previous month are attached. For a time, I fell behind with getting fabric embroidered and finishing the journals. Life sometimes gets in the way of the best intentions. That s actually another story. But some forced down time and some planning allowed me to catch up and finish all the covers this year. They look amazing; ARK has 9 Volumes, JCK has 7 Volumes, and DOK has 5 Volumes. I m looking forward to putting the covers on next year. I hope these journals travel farther and wider than I can imagine. I love you kids.