Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them.
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Volume I
In the midst of book culling, reported here in March ("The Books Inside Us") piles of old photo albums and two scrapbooks surfaced. I cannot remember the last time I printed a photograph, or created a photo album, or a scrapbook, and wonder how historians will gather documents from personal clouds. Most startling as I perused one particular album from a trip to Vienna, I found a photo of my maternal grandparents' marriage certificate with my mother's handwritten note: Marriage certificate of my parents. Therefore it was legitimate.
I wrote the two intriguing sentences down in a notebook and have been pondering them ever since. I also texted them to my sister; she also has no idea what they mean. And so it remains a mystery, an opportunity to untangle a family secret, or a prompt for a story, a story that has been buried and cannot be unearthed other than in a writer's imagination.
So it is with people in photographs that cannot be identified, erased by the passage of time and distance, or the contacts in my phone if I have neglected to annotate a connection in the notes. My daughter made a beautiful scrapbook for my 60th birthday, and as I flipped the pages, each one either a letter from a friend or relative, or an artistic collage of photographs, I marveled at both the familiarity and strangeness of the images and remembered stories. The process of looking and reading evoked some sadness at the passage of time, lives lost before, during and after Covid, or the interruption of connection after a move across the country, across the ocean, and back again. But I also marveled at the life I have lived thus far and the rendering of my personality and life's work through the eyes of others. This scrapbook, an objet d'art, is a gift in many respects. And to find it again, as if for the first time, as it surfaced in the culling, was an even greater gift. I took photos of the photos and the letters with my phone, and sent them out as texts. Most recipients were grateful for the memento, thanked me, and commented in a variety of ways, adding more story to the stories. One or two texts went unanswered. That sent me to Google and Facebook to find out if the person who had attended my intimate 60th birthday party was alive, dead, overseas, or in prison. Those stories for a future story here, or elsewhere.
When I was working on a short biography of Mae West for Chelsea House Publishers, a source suggested that I go to the New York Public Library Lincoln Center Branch to search for scrapbooks Mae West's family, friends and fans had donated. It was a treasure trove and took me nearly a month to pore over, every day pleasurable and immersive. I was witness to Mae West's childhood and fascinating career in real time. I could hear her authentic voice—not her stage voice—telling me her story as the photos and memorabilia accumulated. The collection has all been digitalized for the benefit of future biographers. And though it's unlikely that anyone will be writing my biography, my 60th birthday undigitalized scrapbook, and the photo albums, are valuable to me and my family, which is value enough.