Something Highly Valued

Shortly before Hurricane Isabel came roaring through the Peninsula leaving great swaths of us without electricity, I had moved my mother from her lovely apartment into a one room accommodation in her retirement home’s health care unit. When much of our normal schedules and activities were stopped by the storm and subsequent power loss, I used the extra time to sort through the boxes of mother’s memorabilia I had brought to my home. When I realized that I had a lifetime of precious pictures and souvenirs that represented the interests, highlights, and passions of my much loved and admired mother, I decided to preserve what seemed appropriate in a scrapbook—the perfect project for the daylight hours when everything around us was mostly at a standstill for a long 10 days.

Now this completed scrapbook is a treasure to me. It contains two pictures taken by a professional. One of my mother as a baby and one from her girlhood. Raised with two brothers and five sisters on an Indiana farm that only provided the bare necessities, professional pictures were unusual. Records show she paid for her sophomore year of college by teaching elementary school the year following her college freshman year. She taught a year between every college year. She taught high school between her junior and senior college years. I put in letters and pictures of the family who rented her a room while she taught school out of town. Somewhere along that process, she bought a brownie camera with her earnings which led to pictures that help make this scrapbook special along side her carefully saved memorabilia. The book not only provides precious memories of my amazing mother, but it also supplies a record of a particular lifestyle—the life of a large family on a subsistence farm, attending a one room schoolhouse which produced well-educated students who qualified for jobs. As a result, each working sibling helped fund the college education of a younger sibling.

The scrapbook contains dance cards (a custom I’m pretty sure no longer exists). It shows a record of a year of dates with my dad and displays her graduation program as well as newspaper clippings from her bridal shower. A 1930’s pamphlet on pregnancy precedes some pictures of her new family life. More newspaper pictures testify to her community involvement and records her work to support the local symphony orchestra. Another letter is from the Herbert Hoover Presidential campaign. Apparently, my mother did some local campaigning for him.

This scrapbook memorializes her life and is precious to me because it is a tribute to and a record of my mother’s interests and activities. I also hope it will serve to keep her memory alive for my children, and grandchildren. Is there someone in your life for whom you would like to preserve their memory? Ask God to help you record something whether large or small that would help preserve memory of that particular person.