My Mother has to be the original scrapbook queen at least as far back as the 50’s and 6o’s.  As long as I can remember up to the present she has created “photography scrapbooks.”

Now some may say her vast collection are just photo albums but they would be wrong.  You see my mother injected her own unique style of scrap-booking into her photo albums long before it was recognized in the form it is today.

It would have been a straight forward (and boring) effort to simply arrange family photographs in neat albums in order to preserve forever our memories but my mother went far beyond that.  Her photo albums have always included additional memorabilia such as cutouts of maps highlighting the specific area of adventure related to the pictures, brochures, pieces of nature (everything from feathers to flowers), buttons, reservation ticket stubs, museum tickets and fliers, greeting cards that were married to the events that were so lovingly and carefully laid out in her scrapbook photo albums and hand written tags of paper describing the dates and events that unfold in front of you as you browse the volumes of memories that would fill up a small library.

No my mother is not a photo album creator but a Picasso of memories that she invented in her own unique way. Those memories will forever be instilled into our family “Hall of Fame” and I, being the eldest child, fortunately have been designated as keeper of the family memories as I should be since my sister does not appreciate the collection anywhere near as much as I do.  I will be the heir of these memories that I will pass down from generation to generation to last long after my mothers has gone to be with God.

My mother is nearly 80 as I write this but she still diligently photographs, catalogs and arranges our family memories in her photography scrapbooks and they are the magic memories that do and will keep our history alive for myself and our family.