Goodbye to then

Over the weekend, I considered the fate of several scrapbooks of pictures taken from the local paper, the Winnipeg Free Press. These pictures were carefully chosen and cut out over a period of two years, starting immediately after I moved to this spot in the heartland of the Canadian continent more than 15 years ago.

I began that endeavour as a way of recording time and events as I passed them by. A pictorial story to share with my nieces and nephews if and when they ever came to visit me here. A commitment that ran dry after two years because life simply moved too quickly for me to keep up the task.

As if to still time completely, each picture was placed in proximity to another that reinforced the particular story. Each scrapbook was stamped with a cartoon of the day or the event or the sentiment. It was a process that began with 'ooh, look at the telling pictures' and evolved into a memorial of transition from then to now.

Unfortunately, it takes effort to revisit the then on a regular basis, and I was pursuing the now so much that completed scrapbooks were relegated to storage space, and forgotten. Others in progress slowed when the glue ran out, the 'telling pictures' didn't, or another deadline loomed. Eventually, even those books in plain sight became invisible and unattended, wilting in their undusted corner.

In many ways, it was a tough decision to let those scrapbooks go, but when it was done, I felt neither joy nor sadness. There is a time and a place for everything, and although I did look back through each of those pages before I let them go, the memory of that endeavour was enough to satisfy my reminiscing.

Ultimately, they will do what all good stories do - become part of another. Recycled, then blended, then reborn in a new shape with a new purpose. A journey I interrupted when they came together and stayed a while in a story all of my making.