Saving Memories

As we packed for New Mexico, I came across a box that Trevor had tucked away, a box filled with momentos, photos and VHS tapes. I fumbled through the pile, flipping through photos of relatives and army adventures, phone numbers written in chicken scratch on the back of receipts.

Before our house fire, I saved everything. Like Trevor, every note, every card, every photo, was tucked into a special place, somewhere. A plastic bin slid beneath the bed. On a bulletin board over my desk. I savored every little physical memory and stashed it away for a rainy day, when I would slide out the boxes and bins and go through the memories I had forgotten.

It was nearly impossible to sort through the box, choosing what should be packed and what no longer needed saving. The Volkswagon key that Scrappy had tried to it? Garbage. The photo of Baby Shay on her first Christmas? Saved. The girls phone numbers on napkins? Garbage. The VHS tapes marked with "Trevor's Basketball Game" or "Christmas"? Saved.

I don't think that my parents have home videos of us, not that I would say that's a bad or good thing. What I did realize holding Trevor's tapes was this - I want to have videos of our life together. I want to remember the face that Trevor makes at me when he thinks I'm being ridiculous, I want to remember the places that we've been together, the things that we've done, that we've seen.

Last week, I interviewed my little brother and created this video to remember just who he was at eight. With Trevor's birthday quickly approaching too, I wondered how I could achieve the same effect. I started dreaming of sharing a video each birthday with video clips from the past year.

On Sunday, my daydreaming grew roots and began to grow into a new dedication: to capture our life on video. This is the second piece to our Tent Rocks trip - a short video from our hike. I filmed it on a whim, without any idea of how my camera functions when shooting video. I have a lot to learn but these two imperfect minutes make me smile none the less.