What I’m Not Leaving My Son

How do you capture family memories in scrapbooks when many of the years, although everything ended up fine, were so painful that you stopped making albums?

While I thought I was “scrapbooking” for my kids so they’d have a beautiful record of their childhood, it was really about me. It was my chance to release myself from mothering pain, sit around with other women, crop photos, design pages, and infuse my creativity into something I could control.

Now, sitting in front of 30+ albums I’ve moved from house to house—the ones that were in my “go kit,” really, the whole back of my SUV when we were in potential evacuation areas—they’re just stuff. As I think about another move next spring, I know I’m ready to shed this extra weight.

These memories are still valuable, but I no longer need an album for my daughter, an album for my son, and a family album for each year of our lives up until it all imploded. The last few albums look sad and woefully bland compared to earlier years, when they were a primary outlet for my creativity and a social engagement. At some point, being with other moms whose kids weren’t struggling stopped feeling refreshing and started feeling like a splinter I couldn’t quite dig out.

Today, I’ve accepted the reality that my daughter has never been attached to us or these memories, and that’s an honest acknowledgment of what truly is. That also means the weight of these memories falls solely on my son unless I do something now.

Is it really necessary to keep dozens of pages, particularly when some of these pictures also exist in various digital formats? Is it really necessary to lug these around?

At this stage in life, I’m considering what my son will face when he has to go through my things someday, hopefully a long time from now. He hasn’t asked me to keep 30 albums, and I haven’t asked him what he wants. I know he enjoys looking through the pictures periodically as he goes through different milestones in his life.

What I know I don’t want to do is give him a mountain of material to sort through and decide which version of the same memory deserves to survive.

I did this with my in-laws’ garage.

Honestly, I felt guilty about everything we tossed in a decision-making frenzy just to get through it all. That’s the part I want to spare him. If I can do some of that work now, while the choices are still mine to make, that’s part of the estate planning I want to leave him too, not just the will and the accounts, but one less pile to face.

I’ve moved from the mother-of-the-groom phase back into the rest of life—the refining, intentional, what-do-I-want-to-carry-forward phase. And that’s okay. Probably a coping mechanism as I process all of the feelings.

So I’m going through all of them now, moving the photos worth keeping into albums that will stay, and recycling the rest. They served me for a time. That time has passed.

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P.S. As a reminder, Dear Kate: notes for women with a story to tell subscribers have been moved to the mailing list for Reflections from a Recovering Perfectionist, since I will no longer be writing two separate newsletters. Reflections is where you’ll find the fuller picture of how I think and write, with book coaching as one part of it.

Everyone is invited to Book Coach Office Hours. The next three sessions are October 15 at 3 p.m. Pacific, November 18 at noon Pacific, and December 17 at 3 p.m. Pacific. You can register for any of them here. (Space is limited to 15 people.)

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This was originally published on Substack.