Ruined Memories

J will be headed to college in a few months and my thoughts have turned to her childhood many times recently. Usually, it is about memories I deliberately did not capture on in pictures and video so I would have them perfectly preserved in my mind. When every other parent was video recording the piano recital, swim meet and school play, I often just watched and try to be present in that time as completely as I could. This blog which has been around since she was a little kid has no images of anything from her life - I wrote about events that meant something to me but worried that images would alter the way I remembered things. 

Reminiscing over the digital footage of their childhood is usually not something the kid does - it is more a parent and family thing. To that end, not having an exhaustive digital archive of her childhood does not appear to be a big deal for J but I could be proven wrong yet. Maybe there will come a time when she wishes there was more for her to see and hear beyond my vivid recollections. 

I remember loving it when my grandmother described the silly things I did as a toddler and how much reliving those memories made her laugh. Each time she told her story, it created a word picture in my mind and at each telling, that picture was a bit different. I was at liberty to imagine that incident she was describing how I liked. When I think about my grandmother now I miss her being able to describe me as I once was. The pictures we have together from that age don't nearly tell her story as she was able to.