Memories of the Heart (My Travel Journals)

I thought it had started when a family member gifted me a scrapbooking kit for my eighth birthday - you know, one of those from Michael's or Hobby Lobby. Little did I know, this meditative process of documenting travels and curating memorabilia was inherited from my mom.

The minute after commencement kick-started an eventful summer. I took my recent concussion as a sign from God that I needed to stop running and be okay with stillness. The brief periods to lay low at home churned this unsettling need to keep my hands (and mind) busy. I was always the kid at school whose legs wouldn't stop shaking, an outward manifestation of my inward itch to act and do. It's not that I didn't stop to smell the roses in the good ol' days, but I was so active that savoring didn't look like the meditative reflection it is for me today.

During the few hours here and there of quiet, I found myself retreating to my impulse to organize and reorganize again. When I was younger, I used to call my hours in our then-unfinished basement "treasure hunting." I'd dig up little trinkets from our apartment in NYC that had been tucked away in boxes. This past month, "treasure hunting" became the euphemism, "cleaning-because-I-won't-be-around-when-you-guys-potentially-move-out-of-the-house-and-I-also-need-storage-boxes-for-my-move." 

The results? 

Well, Mom has enough Bible study books, worship song books, Christian music CDs, and half-used journals full of Bible study notes to officially start her own store. 

Also, I came across thirty or so photo albums and hundreds of uncatalogued photos still in their Snapfish envelopes. 

I don't know if I was narcissistic as a child, but I loved flipping through old photo albums and rewatching home videos my parents filmed of us. Part of this process solidified the unconventionally strong childhood memory I carry, but also ingrained how I treasure photos to this day. It was a way to comfort my grandmother when I was taking care of her after high school. Recently, coming across my parents' old travel photos was a way to recognize that my love for photography and documentation came from my parents. 

The coconut Mom held in her hands under that Mexican bungalow could have been in a Conde Nast Traveler magazine. She has ticket stubs, travel brochures, and menus from Vancouver to Hawaii. Dad took these photos all on film using that Nikon that's still stashed in the cupboard above our kitchen phone. The richness of the colors is shushing my big mouth about how his iPhone photos from our June 2019 trip are lackluster.

As I was sitting on the floor, organizing photos, negatives, postcards, and albums into piles, I realized that the organization stopped more or less once Will and I entered preschool. Today, Mom prefers the convenience of photobooks (pro tip: look out for those deals, they're everywhere), but I haven't been converted. The traditional prints are irreplaceable.

Gone are the days when I would sit in my room after school and arrange my photo snippings, decals, and stickers on 12x12 scrapbook paper. Over the past two years, I've experimented with smaller versions of a "scrapbook" that I call a "travel journal." It's less private than the actual journals I carry during trips yet more personal and "real" than the blogposts I write. There's something about a tangible photo that makes it all the more special. 

With my Baltic Sea journal, I used a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook as the vessel for my doodles and photos. The result was a little too bulky, and quite frankly, Leuchtturm's are too pricey. I took an old cardboard box and fashioned my own journal with old scrap paper for Greece. As much as I love the "homemade-ness" of it, it was too time-consuming, even as I tinkered away with it, bit by bit, before bed last semester. 

The formula for my Central Europe journal, which I'd like to continue with, is an old binder and self-adhesive scrapbook paper (which I found in abundance with our old photos). 

Less bulk, less glue, less double-sided tape, less time. And the accoutrements, like boarding passes, miscellaneous coins, candy wrappers, quotes from my journal entries, cut-outs from local brochures, and stickers, can stay.

Here are the results:

Note: I think a stop-motion would have been perfect, but this was too late of an afterthought. Enjoy my extremely large piano hands!

Pocket-sized somethin' to keep me grounded. It's filled with names of people who ground me, messages that make me tear up, aspirations, and the Father's encouragement. 

Made from a cardboard box and decorated with paper bag, newspaper, magazine, a restaurant chopstick sleeve (mmhmm), and Pinterest photo cut-outs. I put the scrappy in scrapbook.