BY JOELLEN COLLINS
As I photocopy shots of childhood cousins taken with Brownie cameras, I wonder if my work is futile. Last week I was speaking with some friends about clearing out furniture, keepsakes and objects we used to think our children would like inheriting. Both had recently been sorting, distributing, and perhaps disposing of their mothers’ possessions.
I am currently not facing that difficult chore, but am plowing through memories of my whole life as I create a photo-scrapbook culled from deteriorating family albums with photos of my grandparents and reprints from more current collections.
When I was a young adopted and adored little girl, my Uncle Doc made a photo book for me of cleverly cut and arranged photos termed “Prints of a Princess.” For example, he formed into circles the tiny black-and-white pictures of me, creating “ornaments” he pasted on to a Christmas tree drawn as background. I cherished that effort, and when it burned in a fire, I felt an acute loss, though the pain was temporary because that book reflected the blessings I acknowledged in having known such a loving person. I have learned that objects—even photos—are not as important as how we experience those we love.
I once created larger photo books for my daughters and now find myself making collage-like pages celebrating my grandchildren. It seems impossible NOT to set my life and that of my family in some kind of order and memory-inducing fashion. Fortunately, I enjoy the process as I used to do with my fabric art.
The world has changed greatly, over my many decades, as evidenced by two photos I happened upon yesterday. One recorded a junior high theatrical production I acted in, where the family maid was a classmate in blackface. A later picture was from my first international experience at the age of 19 building playground equipment in village schools in the Ecuadorian Andes. Our group photo includes a fellow volunteer, a dynamic young collegian from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I remembered how he hadn’t been allowed to stay with the rest of us nor drink from the same water fountains at the University of Miami where we all first gathered. That was because of the color of his skin. I shuddered looking at these, realizing how far we have come but how far we still need to go to be better people.
I joke that my daughters will not inherit a bundle of money from me but, through my writing, will receive a sense of what a woman of my generation experienced in the long-gone 20th Century.
Will my scrapbooks just decay into torn scraps and dust? If one can’t access them digitally, where will they be? Does anyone care? I do not know, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. I just hope that my family will remember me as Bibi Jo, an inordinately affectionate mom and grandma, but also, perhaps, as an unconscious historian who attempted to record the incidences and experiences of her time on earth.