In my Journey through Life, I will:
Take pictures: Create memories along the way and stop every
now and then to remember those special times.
I have a scrapbook, filled with mementos of my
childhood. I probably started it in junior
high, and it is so big, it is in a box. The
book is tied together with a long pink silk ribbon, and it contains report
cards, honor certificates, pins for reading books and Honor Society pins,
pressed corsages from proms and dances, and letters from my nieces as they grew
up. When I was a high school cheerleader,
we gave the athletes “spirit gifts”, like candy bars and trinkets with
motivational sayings; I kept samples of those in my scrapbook. When I traveled, I collected ashtrays,
matchbooks, postcards, and napkins; they are in the scrapbook. And, of course, it has pictures: pictures of
my childhood classmates; pictures of my cheerleading days. It has pictures of the ten-day history trip I
took in junior high that took me and a two busloads of students from Chicago to
historical sites in Philadelphia to Gettysburg to Washington, DC to Virginia and
back again. I took rolls and rolls of pictures with a little Kodak Instamatic
camera during that trip, and they take up several pages of my scrapbook.
Later in college, I continued to take pictures and I kept
them in photo albums that I still have in my office bookcase. Those albums also contain images that I took
when I lived in San Francisco, using an old Nikon 35 mm camera, with which I
honed my photography skills.
I also have pictures taken with a Polaroid camera. In the early days, Polaroid pictures were
black and white, and you had to wipe the pictures with a chemical that
preserved the picture. If those pictures
remain, the chemical treatment now looks like streaks across a sepia
image. I recently came across a newer
color Polaroid picture of one of my now-deceased furry babies, Jerry, when he was a kitten; the
picture is getting darker and the image is degrading. Maybe I’ll scan it for more permanence, or
maybe I’ll just let time be time.
Movies are also an important part of my visual memory. I especially remember my Uncle Demosthenes
Trujillo filming so many family events, using a little (as I recall) 8mm
camera. In the 1980’s, we began to take
movies on a VHS camcorder. It was the
size of a small bazooka, but you could take the film out of the camera and pop
it into a VHS player.
I also created a webpage for the 2007 Family Reunion. The webpage contained an online scrapbook of
each of our family members, which I used to create a tribute movie/DVD. Following the reunion, many of us joined Facebook,
and today, thanks to Facebook, Instagram, and smart phones, we can now see
family pictures and videos on a daily basis.
I am so grateful to my family for special memories. After Mother died in 2006, my
sister Mary Ann lovingly took Mom’s collection of pictures and newspaper
clippings, separated them by siblings, and created a personalized album for
each of us. For Christmas 2015, my
brother Cris
(the family historian and genealogist) gave me a CD with pictures he has taken over the years. Cris also took many movies at family events,
as well as many pictures, and so did my nephew Ray Valdez, Jr.
My scrapbook, the albums and CDs are my most cherished
possessions, not just for the memories, but for the act of preservation that they
represent. They are my descansos, my pilgrimage, as I stop
along the way and reflect on the joy, love, milestones, and history of being
Sanchez-Medina.
And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the
Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone
upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of
Israel, that this may be a sign among you.
When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to
you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off
before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the
waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of
Israel a memorial forever.” Joshua 4 (ESV)
About Me:
I am a retired Writer-Editor,
and a future best-selling author. (That’s in my vision board.) I am also a creator of hand-crafted items
such as rosaries, beaded jewelry, and hand-woven and crocheted scarves and
prayer shawls. I am one of 12 siblings,
and I co-parent a menagerie of cats, dogs, and a too-talkative parrot.
