The Roanoker - July/August 2019 - 83

E S S AY: S C R A P B O O K I N G B Y A T H R E A D

> CONTINUED FROM PAGE 82

our busy, crazy lives: photos of hard-won As atop tests, Personal
Record running times for my husband and son, a photo of my
daughter minutes after her braces came off.
In short, it's the best scrapbook a mom could put together.
Because, alongside the "on the bus" and "at work" assurances,
this thread also captures the practical jokes we played on the
kids. (We got new baby chicks! April Fool's!) It records the scary
day when storms blew through our city right at school pickup
time, wreaking almost as much havoc on our carpool as it did
on the trees and rivers.
There are dispatches from my daughter's two weeks away at
camp ("Last night, we had to evacuate the building bc someone
burnt popcorn and the fire alarm went off "). Excuses for why
my husband is running late ("Behind Zac and Nic for the
shower"). Photos of how my son rolled out the pizza dough
so my husband could respond with
a thumbs up. Pics of the swim meet
final score sheets. Useless emoji fests.
And that time when I got hopelessly
lost on the mountain bike trails and
had to be texted back to the rest of
the family.
I don't remember exactly who
first put the group text together or
thought it a good idea to keep us all
- every immediate family member
that carried a cell phone - in one
loop. But it turned out to be a helpful
daily record we could all refer back
to. I know we're not the only family
who does this.
For more than a year I deleted its
contents every night, same as every
other thread.
But at some point (was it when we
started trading Pigeon Toady quotes
after we saw the movie "Storks"?), I
began to prize these writings as a way
to hold onto the inside jokes that
bubble up but are inevitably forgotten
in the rush of the daily routine.
As my kids got older, these texts
became a way to catch even moments
I missed. The summer afternoon
when the teens discovered one of our
chickens had died in her coop. The
updates my son sent from a thrilling
high school football finish. A pic of
my daughter's pointe shoe shank just
after it broke for good.
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Why would I let these moments go?
In truth, my collection is not even one uninterrupted thread
any more. When my husband was assigned a new phone number,
when my youngest got a tablet and could join the conversation,
we started anew. But I cannot bring myself to erase the yearslong play-by-play we captured in that now-defunct thread.
Yet texts by their very nature are meant to be quick - and
quickly forgotten.
This thread is the ticker-tape version of our lives, not the
slowly spun story shared over a holiday meal - or even the
carefully curated version we craft for social media.
Maybe that makes me cherish them all the more. They feel
real - and in real time. The boring and the momentous all
swirled into one, long, string of day after day after day.
As perfect as these texts are at reflecting our lives, they are
less ideal to archive. I always worried
that a wayward swipe could disappear
the whole collection.
Then my tech-savvy son discovered
a simple Command P at the top of the
thread can save them all as a pdf.
So, I have a new guilty pleasure. I
scroll along the hundreds of pages
in this document, stopping in
any random place. Instantly, I am
transported back - to last summer
when we were scattered across the
countr y taking in simultaneous
adventures, to December as I sat at
the Berglund Center waiting for my
daughter to appear in her first lead
role in The Nutcracker ballet, to spring
2018 when my youngest joined a new
swim team.
I linger there for a while, breathing
i t a l l i n : t h e u n c e r t a i n t y, t h e
disappointment, the triumph, the
relief.
And then I pull myself back.
Because as delicious as it is to follow
along this truest depiction of my
family's history, it's even better to see
a new text come across the screen.
"What's for dinner?"
"Taco fixings on the counter. Warm
everything in the oven."
And know that this thread, our
quirky, unfiltered family portrait, just
keeps spooling on and on. I

JULY/AUGUST 2019

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The Roanoker - July/August 2019

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