Putting Pen to Paper

I climb the ladder into the loft to rifle through the boxes that have been gathering dust for so many years up there. I find old Beanos, Lego, scrapbooks filled with my children's artwork from when they were toddlers, photos from my childhood, and a box of birthday cards and letters gathered from over the years.

I have the letters and postcards sent to me from friends I made on summer camp (for this was the way we kept in touch in the generation before Internet and social media), and my best friend from primary school who moved with her family to live in France at the age of 12 (we were both devastated). I have birthday cards from people who I am no longer in touch with, scrawls from toddler nephews, and notes from my husband when we were just getting to know each other.

Why did I choose to keep these mementos of my past? I can't say there was rhyme or reason to it, but taking a few minutes to remind myself of those moments gave me a real sense of peace, calm and love.

I think about the instant nature of communications now being so wonderful and valuable and efficient.

I think about how my children communicate with their friends - Their memory boxes are remarkably empty despite them all being teenagers already, As the instant messages come and go on their social media, there is little that is tangible to put in a keepsake box for a future version of themselves. What will they remember? How will they remember? Who will they remember?

Why remember?

Whether it's forgetting, or choosing to remove them from my memory, there is a lot in those boxes that are physically, intractably part of who I am. The narrative that I have of myself is a very abridged, often very self-limiting version. I forgot, for example, that I attained Grade 5 in the trumpet. I always thought I'd failed Grade 3 and never returned to it because I was rubbish. I flicked through my A Level Maths Statistics work - I don't understand any of it at all any more, yet somehow, undeniably, I was a mathematician who achieved an A in the summer of 1997.

I wonder, as I look at these artefacts, what I could have been, where my life could have taken me, had had a different narrative in my head about music, about maths, about friendships and relationships? I think about what I can do as a parent to help my children hold on to these threads of who they are right now which may disappear completely in their futures. This will no doubt be discussed over the dinner table tonight... I'd better clear some space in the loft!

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Of course there is irony that I am sharing this in a blog post on my website via social media.

As with everything in life, it is not a stark either / or choice as to which form of communication to only use; but life exists in that foggy (or hugely colourful!) place in the middle.