Remember scrap books?  Maybe they were a “girl thing,” but for this girl and her friends, they were a big deal. Pressed corsages from proms, special birthday cards, photos, theater programs and more documented our teen-aged lives in our scrapbooks. 

Phones and computers, the “scrapbooks” of the present are very efficient and convenient ways to recall the stories in our lives.  But there was something special about paging through actual books of memories.

Lately, I have been trying to de-access memory “stuff” in order to make life a little easier for my children at the inevitable time when I am no longer here. I remember how hard it was almost thirty years ago to bid farewell to our son Jeremy’s collection of Sunday TV schedule magazines. Our attic had cartons of TV Guides from newspapers around the world.  We couldn’t give them away then, but they probably would be collectors’ items now.

The other day I came across a bunch of letters that were sent to me by colleagues when I left the job I had loved for more than thirty years.  I read them with tears in my eyes and tossed them in the recycling bag.

I mentioned this to Jeremy who suggested that I take photos of the letters.  This is a child who probably doesn’t have a piece of paperwork in his house.  Everything is on his computer, safely backed up.

So, I fished the letters out of the recycling bag and photographed them. 

They will always be as close as my phone.