And the beat goes on...

When I was a child, my parents had this hatbox full of random pictures.  They were all mixed together - from different decades and different places - and few of them were marked.  We used to get them out occasionally and look through them.  We would have to ask my mother who this or that person was or where a particular picture was taken or in what year.  My mom or dad could identify most, but they often would forget a last name or could only pin down a date to a span of years.  We used to tell my mom that she really should go through them and label and organize them in some way.  Then when she was no longer around to tell us about the pictures, we would be able to identify and decipher our own history.  I used to think to myself, "When I become an adult, I will make sure to label and organize pictures well, so that my kids will have a great way to navigate through their past and mine."
So, to this end, a few years before I had kids, I took up scrapbooking.  I loved scrapbooking, because I could write in important details about an event I didn't want to forget or I could add in keepsake items, like a ticket stub.  But it took me FOREVER to complete each page.  I would ponder on themes and designs for a long time before I even started cutting and pasting.  After my themes and designs were decided, I would painstakingly attempt to make everything perfect.  And, honestly, I just didn't know where to start.  I had so many pictures from my 20+ years and albums of all size, shape, and color, that I felt overwhelmed.  When I got pregnant, I had only made one complete scrapbook of our wedding photos and another book that was basically a hodgepodge of recent pictures.  I decided my dreams of getting everything scrapbooked may be fulfilled in the months after I had my firstborn.  I wouldn't be working full-time and babies sleep during the day a lot, so I would have plenty of time, right?  So a few months before I had Elias, I spent my entire Christmas vacation sorting through pictures and getting them in picture boxes, so that when the baby arrived, I would have all my pictures ready to let the scrapbooking fest begin!  Well, every mom knows that thinking was a bit naive, to say the least.  So, the picture boxes have sat virtually untouched, besides when I throw some new pictures in on top of the ones that were categorized.  So now these boxes that once held such organization and scrapbooking potential, are only one step above the hat box that my mother used.  To make matters even worse, since I was planning on scrapbooking them, I didn't write on the backs of many of them, because I knew that I would be sticking them on a sheet and labeling them on my beautifully designed pages.
I noticed that I could not fit another picture in the boxes that were in more and more disarray by the month.  I brought them out today and attempted to organize them better & to write on the backs of each picture, since they will probably end up in old-fashioned albums with regular picture slots.  I found myself often straining to remember a name or trying to deduce by my hairstyle or how old a niece or nephew appeared what year the picture may have been taken.  And I think how much of my life has occurred with people who I probably will never see again this side of heaven and how surprised I am that I have forgotten things I never thought I would or drifted away from people who were once my dearest friends.  But life goes on and old snapshots get replaced with new ones and life would be very dull and lonely if they didn't. Now that hatbox up on my parents' closet shelf is not just a box of disarray, but a box that reflects a life well spent.  Life is a hodgepodge of people and events and even if they are from different decades or different places, somehow it all becomes intermingled into who we are, who we are with, and what we are doing today.