I don't scrapbook.

I am avoiding some of the “Your Turn” exercises in the GWW chapter on Voice because they seem difficult. I’m supposed to take something I’ve written and rewrite it with a different Voice. Because I use a casual Voice for almost everything I write for fun, this means I’d have to rewrite using formal Voice. I’m then supposed to consider how the shift altered the story.

I may just slap this into the “too hard” pile and move on.

I am perfectly adept in writing in a formal voice. I mean, I am a lawyer. But when it comes to writing for my own edification and enjoyment, I’m not inclined to step back into the formal realm, regardless of what lessons I may learn. GWW text be damned.

Besides, I think it’s apparent that my signature Voice is informal. You can’t force someone to be something she is not.

There are times, of course, when I kind of try to be someone I am not. I suppose we all do? I will occasionally attempt to do something that falls into the “I wish I were the kind of person who did this” category rather than the “I am inherently talented at this” category.

When my husband and I were married, my cousin and his wife gave us a gorgeous, Italian handmade personalized scrapbook as a wedding gift. It is lovely: a very generous, thoughtful gift.

Who wouldn’t want to make a scrapbook after their wedding? Why not create something for posterity that contains casual snapshots and clips of fabric from the dresses and copies of the programs and a few cards from important loved-ones?

Well, maybe because you’ve never done something like that in your whole life, you’re not especially artistic, and you spent a sick amount of money for a professional photographer and videographer to do something extremely similar so you wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Is it really okay to give someone a gift that’s not tailored for them? I like to cook. Nay, I love to cook. But I recognize that there are people who do not like to cook, and who fear their kitchens, and who would rather have a full body wax than be responsible for preparing a dish from scratch. Would I purchase a mandolin slicer or a bamboo steamer for such a person?

I would not. I would realize that the person might then feel obliged to use it, when in reality, they don’t want to use it, nor should they try to force themselves to like using it.

Whatever. This doesn’t change the fact that after my wedding, I owned a really freaking nice, really freaking blank scrapbook.

I decided that it was imperative that I complete this wedding scrapbook. My reasons for this were several. First, I’m shanty Irish enough to be completely incapable of letting good money go to waste. This was a pricey gift; I could not let it sit in a closet somewhere, nor could I (::blush::) re-gift it, as it was emblazoned with our names and wedding date.

Second, it arrived at the start of my marriage. It was the beginning of an era, and I wanted to start off on the right foot. You see, I like photo albums and assorted homemade records of families. I like them more than the average person. I think this is because my own parents never created photo albums and assorted homemade records. My brother and sister and I were loved unconditionally and were showered with attention and support, and we were regularly photographed.* Unfortunately, almost forty years’ worth of these photographs sits in assorted shirt boxes in my parents’ basement. For years, my mom claimed that when she retired, she would sort these pictures and put them in albums.

Well, she’s been retired for over five years, and the photos remain where they have always been.

I guess I feel a little “there but for the grace of God go I” about this. I also know that eventually, I’m going to be the party who sorts those piles of photos (and it’s quite a mess: I think my First Communion photos are in the same box as ones from my dad’s tour in Viet Nam), because the piles bother me far more than any other family member.

The third reason I decided to make use of the scrapbook is because I decided I want to be the kind of person who scrapbooks.

Now, as it turns out, the kind of person who scrapbooks is the kind of person who has a lot of scrapbooking shit. So, I headed to the scrapbooking shit store.

Walking into this place is like joining a cult. Holy cow. First off, the slogan is irresistible: “Don’t let your memories blow away!”

Oh my God! Thank God I decided to make this scrapbook! I don’t want my memories to blow away! I want to nail them down! I will do this with adhesive photo corners and I will tailor my memories by trimming them with this paper cutter and I will narrate my memories with these amusing phrases printed on attractive stickers! I will maybe even come back here and take a class, or sit with those attractive ladies in the back, who wear fashionable outfits and who sip coffee and laugh while they deftly make ribbons from their sons’ little league jerseys and sing along to…what is that, Joni Mitchell?

I bought about $100 worth of crap. And I made a wedding scrapbook. It took me a year and two apartments in two cities to finish. I found it stressful, and treated it as a chore. I got a backache every time I worked on it.

Fast forward.

I have a baby boy. He is wonderful. He is full of promise. I want to record every single thing he does: the genius he displays when he finds his mouth with his fist, how adorable he is when he smiles, the way his hair seems to be transitioning from dark-like-mine to reddish-like-Daddy’s.

I will make a baby book for him!

Now, to be fair, it’s not that I’ve forgotten that I’m not the sort of person who scrapbooks. It’s that my husband has this amazing baby book. It is a full record of first smiles and favorite foods, and it contains useful information like childhood illnesses and when he first slept through the night.** We open it and compare his newborn photo to Acey, and we marvel at how similar they are.

I have a baby book, too. Inexplicably, I kept it in the underwear drawer of my dresser throughout my childhood. It contained an envelope from Cut-N-Curl containing a lock of my baby hair, and a coffee stain. My name isn’t even written on it.

So, I’d say that the baby book project isn’t so much about my desire to be someone I’m not, but more about creating an important treasure trove for my son.

And that’s why I have a pretty blue blank book sitting on the desk beside me. I’m keeping it the clear box in which it came, to protect it from coffee.



*Some of us were photographed more than others. There are hundreds of pictures of my sister, the oldest, and full Super 8 tapes of her taking a nap. There is one baby picture of the youngest child, and I’m unconvinced it’s actually me and not a shot that came with the frame, as the child looks nothing like me.

** Six weeks. This is a talent his son did not inherit.