This week we’re going to do something a little different. There are no helpful hints, no clever parenting tips, no deep insights. All I’ve got is a simple exhortation for you to make an effort to capture the memories of your child’s… childhood.
This really came about just today as we somehow found ourselves in a discussion about organ donors. A small child in our area needs a new heart, which lead to a talk about our status as organ donors and down the rabbit hole we went, discussing internal organs and transplants and the like.
A short time later my younger son asked something about our “eternal organs”. The adorable turn of phrase coupled with the double meaning in light of the previous conversation struck me as something that must not be forgotten. The whole conversation took place en route to our older son’s baptism, which we were going to record to video.
All that got me thinking. We preserve the big moments on film or video or whatever, but it’s the little moments — the eternal organ moments — that make parenting so wonderful. We need to preserve those as well.
So whether you are a crafty person who scrapbooks or a techy person who makes digital albums or a visual person who videos everything or a writer who keeps a journal, make a special point of preserving the memories — big and small — for the future. I promise you that there will never be a day when you think “I wasted all this time recording my child’s development when I could have been out golfing.”
As an added bonus, most forms of memory preservation can be duplicated fairly inexpensively and make much-appreciated (and did I mention, inexpensive?) gifts for grandparents and other family members.
Double added bonus — collecting the most embarrassing of these moments for sharing with your child’s prom date is the kind of hobby that we can all get behind.
But above all, in your twilight years you will have an accurate record of your parenting adventure to look back on and a grand tradition to pass on to your children to use with their children.