Making Memories

Every Day is a new opportunity to make a new memory!

Every day we live means something, to someone, somewhere. It’s the arrival date of some long-planned event, or it is a memory date of something from the past. The longer you are around, and the more you document those important dates, the fuller your calendar is of things worth memorializing.

Every time I write, speak or think about a day, I realize that it is important to someone, somewhere. 

Visiting with a friend in Tennessee, he could recall the date, time and reason we talked the first time he called my home. We didn’t know each other, but he remembers the day. When I visited him…he remembers. When we last talked? He remembers.

It’s important what we remember!

If you think about it, much of what we celebrate relates to something that has already happened. Endings. Even if it’s something new, our celebration revolves around the competion of something started some time in our past. Then we make it important to celebrate the ending every year, until such time it blends into the past.

This makes me wonder how long we will celebrate milestone events?

Unless you keep the memory alive and moving forward into the future, these important dates and events will become forgotten, faded like photographs improperly preserved. Details are lost.

Before long you’re driving down memory lane trying to remember what it looked like in the past. I know. We drove around some old haunts the past few days. The present looks nothing like it did in the past. But the present is the past for someone in the future. I simply know that the present will never be as enjoyable as the past is to my mind.

Here’s my thought today. Answer me this. How do we fix our memory problems?

It used to be in the Family Bible where we recorded the history of the family, but that’s a long time gone book of history. Yes. Much of our past can be Googled (now that’s a new word to use for research!), but there are memories of each person that we may never know if we do not document them, somehow, somewhere.

It’s almost as if we are continuing the thread that we find on so many pages of the Bible.

“Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.”  Deuteronomy 32:7 (ESV)

Remember the old days. Consider the years of all those generations before you. Ask your father, and he will show you. Ask your elders and they will tell you.

It’s the telling of the stories from one generation to the next one that shows up on the horizon!

My bride is good about building scrapbooks with the photos and stories of our past. It’s absolutely enjoyable to flip through the pages just like we used to enjoy our high school annuals. Remember when????

Just this morning, sitting in the hotel lobby I met a Public Health Safety Officer who is here for some of the events that happened on the Ship Channel last month. We start comparing notes and we have a lot of the same stories of our individual pasts – from our parents, travels and experiences…. This is a Memory Maker!

My sister created a needlepoint of all the birthdays in mom and dad’s family tree. My tree. She patiently adds in names and dates as additions come. Births and deaths. Marriages and Divorces. It’s getting full, and fuller by the year. Mom can send me a snapshot, and eventually, it will find its way into someone else’s life when we reach that point of saying our final goodbyes.

Maybe this is only important to me.

I find, especially as I age, that knowing the history of my past is very important. To me. Maybe it’s the way of reliving that is the most important thing, but it surely cements my relationship with who I am, and what I find important. It’s enjoyable when my past is enjoyed in the future by those who are important. To me.

Now. It’s not that we want to memorialize the hurts, but there are victories in remembering the good things about certain dates. Even when those dates also contain disruptive memories.

The other thing that it reveals to me is the fact that I have something I belong to. My family. My country. My friends. My history is secure as long as I have something to connect me to my place in the world.

Now. Let me find a way to share these memories so they will be carried forward by the new and next generations.