By R
achel Allison
Mothers who still have children in the home, this is for you. You may think that the laundry bins will always overflow, but they won’t. You may think that stumbling on an abandoned toy or tennis shoe will forever be a daily experience, but those toys and little shoes disappear all too soon. So do the peanut butter and jam smears on the counter, and the fingerprints all over the sliding glass door.
Instead of dreaming of the years to come when a meal can be eaten without spilled milk, or treasured sleep is not interrupted because a child crawls into bed with Mom and Dad, record each precious experience you have with each precious child.
This morning I came across a journal that I kept from December 1988 through December 1990. I opened the binder and began to read…
“I’m at the roller rink right now waiting for Seth (13) Natalie (12) Douglas (10) and their friends to tire of roller skating. It’s eight p.m. We’ve been here since five. Andrew (6) and Nathan (4) came too. I rented skates so I could “help them skate.” Have you ever heard the phrase “the blind leading the blind?” At one point Nathan was screaming at me to get him off the skating floor. I couldn’t. I couldn’t maneuver him and me both. People were coming at us and a little girl fell right in front of us, so Nathan and I fell on top of her. That made Nathan even madder, and you know how Nathan is when he’s mad?! I decided to bribe Andrew and Nathan with a frozen yogurt if they’d let me take them home early. They’re home with their dad now, and like I “said” earlier, “I’m patiently waiting…”
We have experiences like these and at the time we can’t imagine ever forgetting them. But I did. That journal entry was a forgotten priceless memory, as are the scores of weekly entries that I relived as I read. Several times I thought, “My children would love to have a copy of these recorded memories.”
There are different ways to keep journals these days…some much easier and less time consuming than others. If you’ve never kept a journal I would suggest you Google “journal keeping,” or for some simple tips go to
http://lds.about.com/od/1/a/les_journal.htm
We mothers and grandmothers have a vital responsibility to hold our families together. In good times and bad times the good memories we make together can be the catalyst that gives hope and perspective. Lets make sure these memories are never forgotten. Lets record them.