For Posterity's Sake

Last month I met a young mother who had a photo of her mother on a bookshelf in her home. Her mother died when she was 6 years old. She admitted that she could remember very little about her mother, even though she thought certainly her similar aged daughter would remember her, should she die.

It was a fairly brief exchange, but the short conversation had a big impact on me. It also made me think about a journal entry I made in my journal when I was 13 years old, "I write in this for my children to read. Because I won't always remember."

Which is funny, because I haven't exactly turned over my journals to my children for their reading pleasure, and I'm not exactly sure I will. Except for the one I wrote in from age 4-13. The other volumes of journal can wait for a few years.

Anyway, teenage journal writing aside, that brief conversation with this young mother made me think about all the every-day things we do as mothers that one day our children (and even ourselves) may forget about us.

NOT that I'm planning on going anywhere soon, but because I have such strong feelings about personal journals and records, I decided to record things about now.

I love to play primary songs on the piano while my children get ready for school in the morning.

I absolutely love that Mike gets out of bed a good 1-2 hours before me each morning. As soon as he gets out, I roll into the middle of the bed and sprawl out across the mattress. I do believe my last hour of sleep is the most blissful.

Burping is allowed in our house. Enough said.

I don't like to eat food if I don't know who made it. (Example: church functions, anonymous gifts, etc.) I can't help but wonder if the person who "Boo-ed" us yesterday knows me well, as they were not homemade treats. Hooray! (I would have felt awful throwing a plate of homemade goodies away, but it would have had to be done.)

I have an awful tendency to laugh when I shouldn't. Like at the 5th grade maturation clinic, at a temple visitor's center when "Jesus" speaks in spanish, and when performing a musical number with people in college during a sacrament meeting.

My two small toes on each foot are triangles. (And we noticed for the first time last week that Luke's are too!)

I absolutely have to make my bed and open my blinds within the first hour or so of waking up. I require the same of my children. Except on Fridays. If the kids have made their beds all week they don't have to on Fridays. (Works out well for a "wash the bed sheet day" anyways.)

I squeeze the toothpaste from the top. It makes my husband crazy and every once in a while he wishes aloud that he didn't have to share a toothpaste tube with me.

I love to run up the stairs taking two at a time. I wonder frequently when I will get too old to do this.

I like to lay in bed at night and read or do a Sudoku puzzle, while I watch the evening news. Unless I miss the news right as it starts, then I don't bother with the rest.

I would rather eat chocolate chip cookie DOUGH than chocolate chip cookies. I can usually pass up cookies as dessert. Now brownies or Rice Krispie treats, is a whole 'nother issue.

I dislike making packed lunches. I'd make my children eat school lunches every day if I were a mean mother. Which I am a lot of times, but apparently not when it comes to school lunches.

I talk to myself. It irritates me when Mike or my children try to respond to me. I've even had people at the store think I am talking to them. I'm not. I'm talking to myself.

One day I will have a pair of shoes for every day of the year and one day I will attend an opera. They aren't related, but are two things I will do before I die. Perhaps I will relate them, when I go to the opera, I will wear a pair of new shoes.

I have never had a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, nor have I ever tasted Macaroni and Cheese. And don't try to get me to. I like enough unhealthy things, I don't need to incorporate anymore into my diet.

When I was a child, to fall asleep every night I daydreamed about being a mother and pushing a stroller down the street with a toddler walking close by. I pictured the same street, and the same stroller every time. Even now, as a mother of five, if I have trouble falling asleep, I always go back to this same scenario in my mind.

Perhaps no-one really cares if I have triangle toes or think burping should be socially accepted, but for today, I've done my little bit to preserve something for my posterity.

And now I must go fold my posterity's laundry. (Which incidentally, I LOVE to do.)

Happy Monday.