We went to Bones’ grandparents house today. They were very glad to see us (as always) and while we were there, we watched old videotapes made from 8mm that they had taken of his mom and her brothers and sisters. I was struck by how different things were back then. They were tapes of their first communion’s and you could see where they went up to the communion rail (not used anymore) and that all the women had hats on. Neither of those are things that very many Catholics do anymore.
I remembered how big a deal my first communion was– going to the expensive store to pick out my dress and my veil. I can’t remember the name of the store but it started with a K and had a Polish name. It was in downtown Alpena. I remember picking out my bible and jewelry and prayerbook and rosary. We had a small party and cake and everyone came over. Looking back, it was probably the biggest deal my family ever threw over anything of mine.
What I realized was how precious memories are and how important it is to preserve the past. And also how important family is. I had the first twinge ever that maybe I should have had our wedding ceremony videotaped. Our rehearsal dinner and the ceremony itself were beautiful. How could it not have been? I married my favorite person in the world!
I really feel like I need to surround myself with items and pictures and things that remind me of the wonderful times in my life. I have a desire to work on scrapbooking and print some pictures from my digital camera — I want all that type of stuff in nice albums that I can puruse at my leisure. They make some wonderfully nice ones now–not like the magnetic pages that you had to buy when I was younger. The few pages that I have gotten around to scrapbooking, I thoroughly enjoy looking at when I think about it. I’ve also bought a smaller (8×8 inches) scrapbook, hoping that smaller pages will be much easier to complete than large pages (12×12 inches).
Another project that I would like to work on is writing down all of my memories, in no particular order. I will probably work on that in either digitally via my software program, Life Journal, or in analog in one of the many blank journals that I’ve purchased over the years.
So anyway, those were my thoughts today…
On a side note, I am totally a book/office supply dork and LOVE Levengers. you should check it out if you’ve never heard of it.
{originally titled: Memories…}
