Mommy Blog

The Old Guard

in Giggles on October 3, 2022

How do you store your memories?

We live in an unprecedented time of finger-tip-technology. With a click of a button or the blink of an eye, we have access to an endless realm of data. We can pull information down from the cloud, Google, Safari and Chrome, but is that really the best way to remember and keep track of our lives’ events?

I’m definitely NOT judging…I’m just asking.

I currently have more than TWENTY-THREE THOUSAND photos on my phone.

Twenty-three thousand…PLUS.

Why? And of what??

A quick glance into my photo library, and I found random pictures of recipes, screenshots, inappropriate memes, my dogs—SO MANY pictures of the dogs, a few of my husband, and plenty of my kids. Looking through my phone and seeing a snapshot of a moment in time, did in fact, take me back to the very moment when the photo was real life. I suppose that is the desired effect. But, do you think there should be more to our remembering than just frozen images on a screen?

This past weekend, Jeff and I attended the family reunion on his dad’s side of the family. I vividly remember the very first reunion I was invited to…I was pregnant with our daughter, and Ethan had just turned one. I was tired, set to deliver within the month, and completely overwhelmed by alllll of the people around me.

The event coordinators had so many people to accommodate, that a pavilion at an east Texas state park was rented. The diversity in the age range was mind blowing. Every conceivable demographic was represented: from incredibly fresh infants, to patriarchal couples closing in on the century mark…and everyone in between!

I had never experienced a family gathering on that scale that was not related to a wedding.

I was raised in an extremely close-knit family. We had great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings at all of the major holidays. We headed off to cabins at a central Texas lake for Memorial and Labor Day…but an ENTIRE family reunion whose sole purpose was checking in on obscure branches of a large family tree? Never heard of such a thing.

When Jeff and I checked in (yes, they had a CHECK IN table) at my first reunion experience, we were given a pen and a sheet of paper with questions on it. At some point in the day’s festivities, we were to “update” our little family’s information: Home address, names of children, their ages, etc. When we left, after hugging and being hugged by close to two hundred people, we were handed a printed and spiral bound notebook. Housed inside its pages, was every known member of the family…dating back generations.

We had, in our hands, the origin story of my sweet father-in-law, Papa Jim, and his family’s life story. All of the different branches of the family tree had their own section. Papa Jim’s parents (both sides), their parents and siblings, Jim’s own siblings and their families, and finally Jim’s individual family. Now, the sweetest and most interesting nugget about Jim’s individual family was Jeff is not only NOT Jim’s biological son, but he’s NOT Jim’s adopted son, either.

Jim was Jeff’s stepfather…a stepfather who, at the time of my first reunion, had been divorced from Jeff’s mother for more than a decade. Yet, there we were. Carefully typed, was Jeff’s name, my name, our birthdays, the date we were married, and Ethan’s name and birthday.

Jim’s philosophy was that men and women get divorced—NOT parents and kids. I had truly never experienced THAT thought process before. Jim, and his ENTIRE family, saw Jeff as a member of their family…regardless of last name. It was beautiful.

On that Saturday, more than twenty years ago, I saw, heard and touched memories. I sat by some of the more aged members of the family, and listened intently about all of the shenanigans that Jim and his brother were famous for. I learned about the not-so-innocent childhood of my sweet husband. I was given endless tips on child birthing, rearing, and homemaking. If I’m being completely honest, at the time, I wasn’t as fully engaged or appreciative as I should have been. But, as the years have gone by, and those family members who tried to pass their sage wisdom onto me have left us—I see things differently.

Maybe I’m getting old.

This past Friday night, Jeff and I attended the “Pre-Reunion” dinner. This is typically a smaller, more intimate version of the gathering on Saturday. My first few experiences with the Friday night affair was almost as overwhelming as the actual Saturday celebration. There were always TONS of people around, it was standing room only, until some poor soul vacated a chair and then it was a comical version of musical chairs to claim one for yourself.

That was not the case this year.

This year there were more than enough to chairs to go around, in fact, we had chairs to spare. There were no infants to hold…no toddlers to keep up with…no teenagers rolling their eyes at being forced to mingle with relatives they don’t remember.

My heart ached for The Old Guard.

The ancestry books that we’d been given through the years, can now be replaced with a mouth swab and a Google search. We know exactly who we are related to, who they married, and what they did for a living. But can reading information on a screen really be a replacement for the verbal recitation of memories? Can you truly understand the emotions behind the facts, if you’re not sitting right next to an eye witness?

Years ago, I tried to make a scrapbook of and for my own grandparents. I collected pictures from their young married life, all of their kids, their children’s children, and so on. While the pictures are neatly tucked away inside the pages, the stories are incomplete. My grandmother died before I could capture the stories behind the photos.

So now, I have pictures with very little information…that missing information is something I’ll never know, nor will my children.

The Old Guard is dying. That is a fact of life. It is up to us to continue in their endeavors. It is up to us to ensure that our families’ memories are not merely relegated to a data point on a screen, but rather are emblazoned in the minds and on the hearts of those who are coming up after us.

We must be intentional.

Life happens all around us every day. How will you choose to let it be remembered?

We are the new Old Guard. Let’s not waste it.