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Rozanne Paxman
The Hearts of the Children
I have a large, empty spot above the couch in our living room. It's been bare ever since we moved into our home because I couldn't decide what to put there. I wanted the space to be filled with something that was meaningful to our family.
At the same time, I was unhappy that I hadn't been able to gather my children together at once so that we could have a nice family portrait taken. We had tried for years to accomplish it, but for various reasons, it hadn't worked out.
One day, the solution came to me; I would make a family tree. Because we didn't have the kind of item I needed in the Scrap Girls Boutique, I knew that I wanted to design a kit myself. It was a lot of fun to work on because I was anticipating our family tree hanging above the couch.
In the end, I decided that I would make three family trees: Four-generation trees for Gary and me and one for our little family. Because I believe that families are forever and because I feel close to my ancestors, I thought it would be nice to allow our children and grandchildren to see the faces of these fine people on a regular basis.
Once I designed the kit, I started to collect photographs. It was fairly easy to collect the photos of my own ancestors because my family loves genealogy. I grew up hearing stories about my grandparents and their parents throughout their lives. Part of the story-telling involved displaying the photos of the person being talked about, and my mother had made sure that I had copies of those photos.
However, it wasn't quite as easy to collect the required photos of Gary's family. I visited my in-laws one day and asked what they had. They went through their things and gave me all of the images they owned. I discovered that in some cases, they had actual photographs. I could see that in other cases, I would have to use photos printed in family histories. But, as I counted them all, I realized my father-in-law didn't have photos of his maternal grandparents.
Because that seemed unusual to me, I asked him over and over if he didn't have one somewhere. Perhaps he had forgotten?
As we talked, my mother-in-law volunteered that a cousin might have one. She told me the cousin's name and where she lived. I immediately found her phone number and called her. She told me that she did, indeed, have photos of them and that the originals were hanging on her wall in the original frames.
She became flustered as I begged for copies. I assured her that I would be happy to reimburse her for her costs. As we talked, I discovered that it was not her reluctance to share them that was the problem. It was the technical know-how.
I carefully outlined the process: She would take them to a local copy shop. They would make color copies, which she would mail to me. I would then bring them into Photoshop, edit them, and print them out for our family to enjoy. I would send her copies.
A few days later, she called me and told me that she had decided to send me the originals, minus the frames. She trusted me to do what I needed to do and send them back to her.
I was so touched that she trusted me - a relative stranger - with the care of the precious images. She asked me to repair them and then send her smaller copies of the photos so she could put them in her remembrance book.
Here are the photos in their original and edited states. Of course, I have retained the original. That's the beauty of working with photos as a digital scrapbooker. We get to keep copies of everything!
The next time my in-laws came for Sunday dinner, Gary gave a copy of the photos to his parents. They were thrilled because they had never seen the photos before. My mother-in-law shared that she had never met Grandpa Carter and had only met Grandma Carter once. My father-in-law was touched to see his beloved grandparents again.
The whole experience reminded me why I got into scrapbooking in the first place: Family. Scrapbooking help ties families together. It "turns the hearts of the children to their fathers."
And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers... (Malachi 4:6)
I believe that God and family are the only things that really matter in this life, and if that is true, what could be more worthwhile than spending time doing things that help this along?
Now that I finally have our family trees done, I am going to get them printed on large canvases. I can't think of anything nicer to display in our living room!
- Ro
Layouts by Ro
larger view
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