The Curation of What’s Left Behind

A couple of weeks ago my ancient old mom started pestering me about getting down a box of photographs from the cupboard upstairs. She can’t go upstairs anymore and doesn’t remember that I’ve taken over her bedroom. She still thinks the closets are full of clothes and shoes waiting for her to return to her previous life. The sad truth is, the closets have been weeded of her stuff because she’s shrunken into a rickety echo of her former self.

Anyway, after she asked about the box of photographs several times, I finally brought it down to her and she started going through the contents. Was she looking for photos of her garden that she can no longer spend endless hours in? I wasn’t sure. My mom is not exactly the most sociable person. I never dreamt she was looking at pictures of people, or even that she had a shoebox full of them.

Next, she asked for a particular photo album that she was certain was on the top shelf of her clothes cupboard next to the old family photo album, and the black scrapbook from before she was married. I was doubtful, but I went back up and looked and sure enough there was a photo album up there, a modern type with clear pockets, not very big, just the size to easily nestle in a lap. “Yes that’s the one,” she said. And wonder of all wonders she started filling it with photos from the box. And now, it’s full.

I asked her if she wanted me to buy another photo album and she did. This is surprising because my mom hasn’t taken much interest in anything lately. She doesn’t do her crossword puzzles anymore; she says they’re too hard. She doesn’t read novels anymore; she says the type is too small. She simply sits, listening to CBC radio with her eyes closed. If I ask her what’s going on in the world, she doesn’t know; she hasn’t really been paying attention. At night before bedtime, she watches a few episodes of All Creatures Great and Small or The Good Wife. She doesn’t remember that she’s already seen all the episodes before. Her world is small and her new enthusiasm for filling photo albums is startling, and makes me question my assumptions about her mind.

We’ve all looked through the newly filled photo albums and noticed they are thematically organized: a child in the snow; a series of this child in snow. Mom often asks me to identify babies, or to distinguish between myself and my sisters. She’s reported that she’s having strange dreams now. She chalks it up to looking at all the old pictures.

Now, she’s almost filled the second photo album and there’s a third ready to go when she’s ready. It’s been fun to flip through a real photo album rather than passing around a phone, swiping, pinching, zooming. It’s drawn me down memory lanes of my own.

Mom said it was too bad no one took pictures anymore. She’s forgotten that there’s a digital camera at the end of most arms these days.

It took me hours to scroll back to 2012 in my cloud service. I was looking for pictures with groups of people, road trips, Christmas cookie clashes, the odd action shot of my sisters or my children, friends of the family, cousins, and also the odd iconic shot of a withering pumpkin or the old Rav being towed away to its final resting place. I sent the digital images over to a nearby store that prints and the next day I went to pick them up.

Last night I handed two envelopes to Mom, full of over a hundred pictures. She was surprised and immediately started going through them.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t ask where they came from. She silently shuffled through them, one after the next.

Then I noticed that she was putting some of my photos upright in the envelope, as though she was sorting them, organizing them.

She wasn’t thinking, Oh, aren’t I fortunate to have a new trove of pictures? I’ll put them all in my photo album.

No. What had taken me hours to comb through, select, and download, she was now curating.

I’m not sure I want to see what she leaves out. What doesn’t make the cut.

I don’t need to find another reason to be annoyed by her discernment.

Let me know a little bit about you as I share little bits about me. Please feel free to read the Archive.

If today’s story connected with your heart, you will probably enjoy my novels. They aren’t all the same flavour, but they all come from the same brain: curious, wry, emotionally nosy, and very interested in what people do when life gets life-y.

Start with Odd Mom Out if you like bad best friends, terrible mothers, bratty daughters, aging, reinvention, and the humiliating business of being human in public.

For a darker and more emotionally intense story in which a man must go back to his hometown and face the music while his girlfriend is left behind to figure out what’s happening on her own: Where the Night Winds Wail.

For more about me and my books, please visit my website, sandyday.ca