I'll share

  I have a wooden chest where I store old photographs and other bits of memorabilia. I refer to that as my archives. It does contain a wide variety of objects that have survived over the years. Perhaps the strangest artifact and the creepiest to me, is a lock of my fathers hair. His grandmother cut that lock, tied it with a ribbon and placed it in this small ring box. Written in there, Ben's first haircut. I don't know the year but I'd guess 1925 as he would have been a year old then. I can't bring myself to throw it out. But, it is creepy.

  There are old postcards written by my grandmother to her father. A good number of photographs, some of unknown people, although surely they are relatives in some fashion. Old papers, old photographs and old correspondence. There are some trinkets, some "touristy" stuff, a memory from a vacation perhaps. All of those things are memories. They are what I am now calling "hard copy" memories. Those type of memories I fear will be lost to future generations as we continue forth in this digital age. A photograph printed from a memory card or computer drive doesn't seem as "real" as a printed photograph from the past. It may seem silly to some but it is a feeling I have. The old photographs I have where once held by those in the picture, the same can't be said about todays pictures with as much certainty. Posted to Facebook, tweeted or insta gramed is not the same thing, no physical connection there. 

  In my archives there are many other objects that hold that same feeling for me. I know that they were once held, admired and saved by an ancestor. My paternal grandmother passed shortly after giving birth to my dad. I have a postcard that she wrote to her father when she was about ten years old. Whenever I hold that card I think of her and know that she called him, papa. It's a connection I feel, but can't explain. It is a "hard copy" of her. At least a very small portion, a moment in time when she was missing her father who was away on a business trip. In her card she asks, when are you coming home? She has a surprise planned for him. What that surprise was I will never know. 

  I have started but set aside a journal of sorts. No, not a journal, a catalogue is a more apt description. I had begun writing down the story behind the objects I have saved over the years. I began to explain what each item is and what the significance of that object is for those that aren't self explanatory. It is my thought that even with the "hard copy" without an explanation the object loses its' value. The purpose of that catalogue would be to assign that value, that is my hope. I really should begin again to record all that. If I do not, time will erase it all. Today the struggle will be to determine what memories to save, in a hard copy. Literally thousands of photographs taken, which ones to save. I've written millions of words by now, what to save of that, in a hard copy? What objects and artifacts? 

  Memories in a hard copy. That's what I'm thinking about. Not a museum, an ancestral archive of memories. Moments shared and moments gone by. The objective being to give life to the past to a new generation. You can hold it in your hand and know that I once held it, or your grandparents held that. A thread from the past to bind the future together. Still it is only a "hard copy" once isn't it? Memories aren't really something you can copy, only share.