April’s fragment

“Scrapping the Past”

One winter when my kids were teenagers—Pearce eighteen and Evan fourteen—I surrounded myself with fanciful paper, cute stickers, and cheerful ribbons. It was time to scrapbook because I had never bothered with making baby books. They did each have a box of cards, pictures, mementos. It occurred to me to just give them their boxes and call it done. Such a thing was in alignment with my mothering style. Haphazard and half-assed. But I decided to go for it, playing detective to remember when a specific picture was taken. The good news/bad news was I didn’t have that many pictures.

When I ran away to myself in 2000, I left the photo albums with the boys and their dad. A penance of sorts because I was a bad mother and didn’t deserve the albums. Which is incredibly pathetic—but it felt cruel to take them with me: I was the one leaving, after all. “Tearing the family to shreds” was one of the many accusations Ed hurled at me. The family pictures must stay with the family. I was no longer in the family. . .