No matter how many people insist that taking pictures is not experiencing life or that taking pictures takes away from experiencing life; the regrets in my life are not NOT doing things - they are doing things and having no pictures to commemorate it.
Look, I get the idea of what people are trying to say. There are some sacred moments out there where you simply can't move fast enough to get a recording device ready or the situation is too somber to try. But just because I know it's not appropriate to take a picture doesn't mean I don't regret that there was a failure to record an important or precious moment.
Let me use another word - I MOURN the loss of these moments. Because if I was supposed to be keeping them safe in my heart? Then they are gone. Absorbed maybe into my heart (yay for me!) but available for recall? No.
I will even go a step forward and take utter responsibility for the reason people say this to me. Because they can see the anxiety on my face when a wonderful thing is happening and there is no chance to record it. They interpret that as stress and as not simply embracing the moment as it happens.
But, I promise you, that's not how I see it. I see something beautiful or joyous or precious happen and I know that I will not remember it. Fine, here I am experiencing it. Great. Check. My heart swells, my soul sings, my flesh breaks out in bumps. But guess what is not going to happen? Me recalling it. I remember the trying to remember things more than I remember the things I wanted to try to remember.
I think maybe other people have better memory recall than I do? Because of all those moments where my only option is to try to savor reality; experience an experience, I remember... two of them? Clearly? No, not really. And I lose them by the moment, like shedding skin cells: I don't even know I'm losing them - I don't even know they are gone.UNTIL...I have some recorded moment that brings me back; that makes me draw my eyebrows together and my brain creak as I try to access those wispy ghosts of things I really really wanted to remember.
I can only assume it's normal that I have more clear memories from before kids than after. I remember vividly the first moments of Steve and my relationship. I remember how he held my hand BEFORE we were even slightly dating while we were in a circle of friends. I think my arm sort of went numb as I tried to play it off like no big deal. I remember doodling on a piece of paper as we discussed details for our first date. I remember he held my hand the whole way driving me home after our first date even though I think two of his fingers were jammed from playing basketball. I remember when he grinned at me delighted because I kissed his cheek for no reason while he was trying to find a place to park in our second week of dating (went to Sampo gig I think?) and I was wearing June's weird fabric button up shirt. But move onto my life with kids? Geez, I have a few imprinted moments from all of them, but I've lost SO MUCH of Abby. We didn't do video as much - no iphones - back then, but thankfully, I have a few. So yes, I'm thankful, and yet, also - seeing what I do have makes me realize how much I've lost because it doesn't seem real... Did I really know her at that age with all her adorable voiced glory? OH MY GOSH SHE WAS SO CUTE!!! She spoke - full chatter really young. I had to develop a practice of answering most of her chatter with "What do you think?" just so I didn't go wildly insane.
Yes, that is one of those indelible non-recorded experiences I have retained: me looking in the rear view mirror at a 4 year old Abby asking questions of every sort and wanting to engage and me not having the brain power to engage and turning it back on her. That sounds super negative but it wasn't. She didn't want real scientific answers to her questions, she just wanted to talk and engage and me getting her to expand more on what she was thinking actually made her way happier than trying to actually answer all her questions with answers that just gave her more questions that I didn't have the answers for. Do I remember her face or her voice or what questions she was asking from that moment? Not as much as I'd like. Mostly I just remember MY face and how I felt. What a jip!
It's just that, as I age, the flighplan of life is starting to get obvious. I don't care if my 5 times great grandchild wants to know what I was thinking and feeling and so they find my blog (But let me tell you, if they are anything like me, they totally would find it and care). I want my memories: my treasures on earth. I don't need to elevate them to golden calf status, but I want them accessible.
Would I DIE if all my records burned up? No... But I would be sad. Also, guess what? I would remember less things. GUARANTEED. That's a jerky thing to ask anyway... why hassle me about this? Why hassle anyone about this?
Okay, maybe I can answer that. I've seen people who hijack a sacred moment by interfering and inserting themselves and their camera and their commentary and their self doubt and their criticism of your face in their effort to do exactly what I am saying I want. Only it's not EXACT. They want a moment that says something about them... or you (my kid is prettier or more successful than your kid). I don't want the moment so that I can share it. I want the moment so that I can KEEP it dammit.
Oh, I can't make time stop; trust me, I don't want to! I don't want eternal babies. It's not about stopping time or trying to make things how they used to be. It's about acknowledging that all parts of life are important, even if they are fleeting. For a good number of years, a child is not going to remember the love we poured into them, the sacrificed movies, the 8 millionth time we cleaned the living room so that their friends weren't scared to come over ;). But with photos, videos, audiofiles, etc. I am giving honor to that time. Does my child need me to? No. Am I looking for credit? No. I just want to know that it matters that it happened. I want to remember why it was worth it even at the time. It wasn't worth it JUST because my children are going to grow up with that core of love and support - it was worth it because it was my WORK, it was my LIFE. All these transitory things that took up large chunks of energy and love - they mattered because I matter and therefore what makes up my life matters, even if only to myself.
I value my life and the people in it, and I like to look back and see the journey I've been on. Sometimes, this act in itself is an experience. The act of touching a picture I took such care to frame up or holding snapshot I once treasured can be meaningful all in itself. To see an older picture with a better understanding of what was happening, or what it was like to be in that moment - it can heal and it can hurt. Neither of which are unimportant.
I don't see how this all varies SO much from how others think valuable moments should be experienced.
Reflection - there are a lot of inspirational quotes about it which I don't want to share here because I don't want to put the effort into researching if it was actually said by who it is attributed to.
Think about this. It is so much easier to manufacture how a moment should have been; distorting it to how we wish it had been without a record to prove us wrong. And sometimes, we need to be proven wrong to realize we haven't gotten nearly far enough ahead of where we once were or to realize we are not giving ourselves enough credit for how far we've come.
