Sorting Through Memories

Remember film rolls and negatives? Remember taking pictures and having them developed into prints, even misfires you didn’t expect, just because they were on the roll, too? The digital age has freed us from all that mess, and provided more manageable ways to save family memories on computer and disk, going forward. Looking back, though, I realize...
...I had neglected to preserve respectfully those precious Kodak moments of our family’s past.

Over the years, our family photo storage box has turned into a tattered mix of such memories as our wave-loving son’s prints mixed randomly with images of our other son’s cross-country races. Happy times depicted, for sure. Lack of order, however, keeps the family story from being told the way our hearts originally intended.

Annoyed with this photo mania and desiring to give our grandchildren some sense of family history through pictures, we decided to tackle the disheveled box and arrange albums. We rummaged through hundreds of Christmas tree images bobbing merrily alongside baby pictures, graduations, proms, childhood friends, family vacations, and birthday parties…finally positioning several prized images into meaningful spots on album pages.


This project gave us an opportunity to exercise my granddaughter’s organizing abilities and helped her learn about some relatives she may not meet, but who played important parts in her family members’ lives. It gave us a chance to keep alive the story told in snapshots from previous times for our descendants…and maybe a keepsake album or two to share during upcoming holidays!

Contributed by Kathy Bolger, Senior Graphic Designer, Today’s Woman magazine