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SWEET EPHEMERA OF LIFE

 SWEET EPHEMERA OF LIFE


Memories, such sweet stuff.  Precious memories a lyricist once wrote.

Memories influence our life in so many ways.

Making us what we are today.

Guiding our passions, enhancing our talents.

My Grandma Dame kept a scrapbook.

Not the fancy kind.....

Just an old geography textbook where she pasted newpaper clippings she liked

Over the original pages;

Mostly poems, some from Grit magazine.

Recipes she wanted to try, also from Grit.

A picture of the Dionne quintuplets born in 1934.

An old photograph purporting to show Jesus in the clouds.

I loved that old scrapbook. 

I nearly wore it out just looking at it.


When I was in the third grade, I started my own scrapbook.

As time went by, I threw the clippings into shoe boxes.

Then I discovered manila folders.  

And made files.

And labelled them.

And alphabetized them.

Then I bought file cabinets for the files.


But again I ran out of time and just threw the clippings into the file cabinet.


Now I’m back to making scrapbooks.

Sorting, and sticking them under the clear transparent sheets of sticky pages.


Others make digital scrapbooks.  Not me.

I love turning the pages.  Reading the captions. Remembering.

Don’t need to power up a computer.  Nor fiddling with wi-fi reception.

Just need a lap, a bright light over my shoulder, a comfortable recliner.

My scrapbooks and me.


Sometimes the memories turn to liquid and run down my cheeks.

Sometimes I laugh over a silly comic strip that was funny years ago.

And still is.

Humor never changes and our funny bone doesn’t break.

Sometimes I weep over a yellowed obituary.

Remembering this person that I loved dearly.

That had such an influence over my life.

Missing them now more than ever.


And the pages keep turning.

So many memories.

And a legacy for my granddaughters.

Hoping they will build a scrapbook of their own as time goes on.

Hoping they will get a glimpse of how I lived my life.

What was important to me.

What passions and talents consumed my energies..

What their births meant to me.

It’s a story of life in a book.  An autobiography written in real time.

A story like no other.  Because it is my story and I revel in the telling.


Written by Joan Rowden Hart this 10th day of September 2017.

Copyright by Joan Hart in September 2017
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