I decided to look through and consolidate some photo albums my mother left me. When I did, I realized that she didn’t take the time to really put together something special for me. It was all about appearances. Nothing was in date order. The photos weren’t cut well. The documents that weren’t photos also weren’t selected with care or put into the albums with any thought. She picked out things that didn’t fit. For instance, she saved all my report cards. However, she didn’t pay any attention and she also saved my schedule of classes and my registration confirmation which didn’t have any grades and wasn’t important at all. She probably didn’t even look at it. She also saved payment vouchers for my college tuition. She saved test scores, but then she put them into the photo album with half the sheet on the glue so that no one would ever be able to see any of the test scores. She saved lots of artwork from when I was a little girl, but she did the same thing with it. She folded it in half and put half of it down on the glue and the other half up, so that anyone looking at it could only see half of the artwork. I realized she really didn’t care about saving anything for me. She didn’t care about want I would want at all. All she really wanted was an album to show what a good mother she was and that she had kept all these things for me. It was a testament and a piece of proof showing the world that she was a good mother.
I guess if I wanted the world to know that I am a good daughter, I would accept the albums, but I never really cared about how the world saw me. My mom hated that about me. I went through and got rid of all the useless stuff and the pictures I didn’t want. There’s no need for it anyway. I don’t need proof about what kind of mother my mom was. I don’t need anyone to know what kind of daughter I am. After all, in the end, they are just things and in a hundred years they will be ashes.
I want to keep what gives me joy. I kept the pictures that reminded me of who I am and where I came from. It is difficult to remember that I was once a baby, a toddler, a young girl, a teenager, a young woman, and a middle-aged woman. However, those pictures help me to remember all the days of my life and to know that God sees me. He sees all of me.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
