Passing The Time

One of my favorite hobbies is scrapbooking. Sometimes I go months without working on it, but this week I've decided to dive back in. I find that it's a great way to pass the time because I tend to lose hours and days working at my desk in my scrapbook space, which doubles as one of our guest rooms. (Yes, I have to keep it pretty tidy so our guests will have a place to sleep!)

My sister got me into scrapbooking about ten years ago but I would say I became a serious scrapper around 2004. Since then I've done an album for each year from January through December. Big vacations usually get their own separate albums. Just yesterday I finished my 2007 album and I started working on 2008 today. It is definitely hard to keep up, but I do enjoy it so much.

I remember a few times several years ago when I made attempts to get involved with other groups of scrapbookers. In some instances it wasn't long before I felt like the odd one out. I'm sure you can guess that most of these were mothers who made it a point to declare that the reason they got into scrapbooking was for their kids. I always noticed that even the scrapbooking magazines I subscribed to were full of babies and kids. This used to bother me a little bit, because I knew that surely there were single people and couples without children who also took up this hobby. I totally understand that my frustration came from a place of hurt and longing. I just wanted a hobby that I enjoyed and I didn't necessarily want it to remind me that I didn't have children and may not have them to share my albums with one day.

Indeed, children are fun subjects to photograph and create cute pages about. If you look at my scrapbooks you'll see that my favorite subjects are my nephews! But I also love to make pages about family birthdays and get-togethers, family histories and stories, and our vacation memories. I finally asked myself one day, "Why am I doing this if I'll never have children?" The answer was simple. I did it because I liked it. I did it for myself. I did it for my husband and my family members who enjoyed looking at the albums I created. And that was enough for me.

My husband and I love looking back at those memories. Truthfully, it helps us to realize that our years of infertility and miscarriage were not wasted years. We did do some living along the way! We traveled, we laughed, we grew, and we changed, and we had fun. Sure, there are some not so happy memories in those pages. We lost loved ones and we had hard times, too. But all of that is part of our story and reminds us of how far we've come.

So I'll continue to record our memories in my scrapbooks because it's something I truly enjoy. And if our children someday enjoy looking at those albums, well, that will just be icing on the cake.