My daughter and I made this today — we found the frame, covered in dirt in a heap of rubble (“one person’s trash is another person’s treasure”) and we filled in the blanks with photos of family past (my mom’s mom looking freaking HAWT in a bathing suit, my dad’s dad decked out in his WWII United States Marine Corps uniform — OORAH!), and these scraps of old letters.
I love you, my beloved.
I’ll never forget you.
You are with me, always.
Different handwriting, different names, faded, some. Illegible, others.
We’re digging through this bag of pieces of past lives, the photo that led me to the mystery of my mother and a long-lost love (?),
Prom pictures — mine:
And my mother’s:
Ultrasound photos of the babies I grew, one of whom sits beside me with tape and scissors and glue.
And while we cut and glued and taped and measured, my daughter and I sang along with Idan Raichel “What does time leave for me? These scraps of life… Live for the moment, and collect the shards.”
It’s my favorite song — I <3 it so much that I have two versions downloaded on iTunes — and I listen to it when I need to fill myself with something that only music and prayer and true love can give me.
My daughter knows the words better than I do, but I understand them in ways she can’t yet, having left too many places and left too many pieces of myself scattered. Trash and treasure.
So, I felt my heart explode a little while we built this picture frame with these scraps of our family history, from generation to generation. And in love with the moment and with my daughter and with the life we are piecing together, I can only pray she will treasure all of this, too.
