My future daughter-in-law has lately asked me more than once, to dive into my big plastic bin, to find specific types of pictures for all different events of their wedding celebration. I hope that I’m not the only one who never got into a creative scrapbooking phase, and who still has a big, full, messy plastic bin, jam-packed with pictures. “The Bin of Intentions” – The bin that has been on the vague side of my to-do list for probably decades has been opened and entered more times this year, than probably when I first hastily dumped all of the pictures in it, when we moved from North Carolina to Florida in 2011. (the bin also has a twin sister, jam-packed with our four kids’ (whose present day ages span 30-22) school art projects and crafts. The bin sisters both live surreptitiously, side by side, on a shelf in the garage.) We do have a couple of neat, organized, well-done photo albums, which we peruse through, here and there, and all of our modern day pictures are easily found on our phones, or projected up on our Aura frames, but the bin pics are from that in-between stage of life, when all of the real change seems to happen. The bin pictures are from a time when we were so busy raising four kids, and occasionally capturing these moments on camera, and then carelessly letting the developed pictures precariously pile up until I finally went to Walmart and bought giant plastic bins to dump all of the pictures in. These are the same bins that the movers rightfully groaned about, saying that they were too full and heavy.
“Full and heavy.” The movers were correct. And I’m not talking about physical weight. There is an emotional weight inside of those bins that I don’t like to approach. I don’t like the feelings of nostalgia and melancholy. And the bins are enormous Pandora’s boxes, loaded with high, high doses of nostalgia and melancholy. The bins are filled with evidence of so many different stages of life, that each stage almost seems to amount to a life unto its own. The bins are so full, of so much, it’s a wonder that they don’t just burst, like an overfilled balloon.
I was talking to my future daughter-in-law’s mother at the wedding shower about the childhood pictures, which we were both tasked to bring. When my future daughter-in-law, who is an only child, was a teenager, her father died, while her parents were in the middle of divorcing. My future daughter-in-law’s mother said to me, that it was surreal for her to pull out the old childhood pictures. “I had forgotten that at one time, we were so very happy. We, at one time, were such a happy family,” she said to me winsomely.
They say that pictures say a thousand words, but I don’t necessarily agree with this statement. Pictures never tell the whole story. Pictures are typically taken at times of celebration and reunion and joy. People pose for pictures. People smile for pictures, automatically, no matter what. Pictures are wonderful reminders of good times shared, and they are also snapshots of time, never to be retrieved again. I love to be reminded of the joyful moments, but my heart aches when I come across all that has been changed and lost – the loved ones who have passed on, the relationships that are now irretrievably broken, the places that even if you go back to them, will never be the same way as they once were, the reminder that you have been so many variations of your own self, as life has continually moved on, moment after moment, day after day . . . . I suppose that nostalgia and melancholy are made up of an intense feelings mix-up/mishmash of joy, pride, awe, disbelief and also a stomach-pitting grief. The bins promote feelings at an intensity that I can only take in really, really small doses.
Therefore, just for now, after a day of sorting, remembering, smiling, crying, feeling intense awe and gratitude for just how much of everything is packed into living the life and lives, of just one family, the bins remain closed. The feelings remain contained. The bins can hold them, until I am ready to feel them again.
“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” – Marcel Proust
“How sad and bad and mad it was — / But then, how it was sweet!” – Robert Browning
“Nostalgia makes hallowed ground from mundane places.” – Caroline George
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.