Mementos, The Best Kind of Art

A review by Tammy Davis

Scrapbooks, photo albums, plastic containers packed to the rim.  Moms tend to hold on to everything.  It’s too much.  I’m as sentimental as the next person but I’m not sure that stashing every card and drawing in a giant big and storing it in the attic is the best plan.  I have a different approach.

When my son was little I started a tradition that I love.  I would pick out one special item each year and frame it. His first time writing his name on lined paper sits on my bookshelf all year.

Once, I got really creative and made a set of placements to use the week before his birthday.  I ran 8 ½ by 11 photos on a color copier and laminated them on a sheet of craft foam.  My son is 25 now and has his own place.  His birthday is coming up soon.  I’m sending him his personalized set of placements.  His first reaction will be to laugh and roll his eyes a little, but there’ s a chance he will use them.  I’m hoping it will bring back happy childhood memories.  He might decide to dump them in the trash, and that would be OK, too.  Those placemats served their purpose.  I think they made my child feel special.  It gave his friends something to tease him about during his high school days when I still pulled them out each year.  Yes, those placements did their job.

My daughter never got a set of placements (sorry 2^nd child), but I do have her artwork and special memories all over the house.   I framed the back of a t-shirt featuring her illustration.  I framed a few of the sweet letters she wrote to Will when he first went away to college.  A landscape she created in elementary school sits on my mantel most of the year.

I just hung her Halloween art – one piece on the back porch and one piece on our ever-rotating memory wall. She recently had some girls over for a spend the night.  They remembered making the same piece of pre-school Halloween artwork.  Evidently, “five little pumpkins sitting on a gate” is a popular theme.

The last time I talked with my son he was visiting another university.  He needed their 3D printer to scan artifacts for his thesis.  He’s far away and doing his own thing.  I miss him like crazy,  but as I go about my Saturday-morning cleaning, I have little reminders of the days when he was at home.  I see his pre-K teacher’s note – “Good job, Will.  Practice using lined paper at home.”  Dusting the pictures of beautiful hydrangeas brings back a happy memory.  Will took those photos right before we moved because he knew I loved those flowers.

I’m glad I don’t have to climb into the attic and rifle through huge bins to find mementos.  I love sprinkling my children’s art throughout the house.  Every day, if I slow down long enough to look, I see the sweet memories I’ve made with my children.  I think it’s the best kind of art.  I don’t need an attic full of plastic bins, my whole house is a memory box.

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