One weekend during the Covid lockdown, my two kids, now 12 and 7 and I went to the basement looking for a missing game piece. We were searching high and low for the missing piece and got to a large bin of miscellaneous toys and toy parts. Legos/cars/trains etc thrown into the bin over the years. In the mad hunt for the missing piece, I dumped the contents of this bin onto the floor. As we rummaged through the contents of the bin my kids went nuts. There were squeals of excitement; and a rush of memories as they went through these toys. Some broken and some intact. The kids sweetly reminisced the days when they played with them (Automoblox a permanent fixture in our diaper bag/toy bag to keep my son when he was little and we’d go to restaurants).
I just sat there soaking in their excitement and renewed enthusiasm as we went tripping down memory lane and eventually helped them gather some of these toys so they could take them upstairs to continue playing with them.
I relegated the rapture of joy and excitement that I had witnessed that day to my memory. If I had to sum up the highlight of the day – that would have been it! I was sure as time progressed I would forget about it and it would be replaced with other memories. That got me thinking – we have our ups and downs all within the span of the day; but what if we can simply put one line down to capture the day.
I have often noodled the idea of scrapbooking or journaling – to document and date my kids first words or the darnedest things they’ve said or my travel memories. But I never got started and never imagined myself following through. I was pretty confident even before trying that it would quickly become yet another activity on my “to do” list that would hound me and stress me out and eventually fall off to the wayside.
As I was thinking about it – I came across some gift ideas on a blog post and boom there it was – a little book that allows you capture “One Line a Day” (a five year memory book). It was exactly what I was thinking about and definitely an atomic habit that I could cultivate. One line a day to capture the day seems like a 1% improvement over capturing nothing and relegating it to the deep well of memories.
I ordered the memory book and it’s been amazing to capture the highlights or lowlights of the day; to reflect; or to set an intention. Sometimes when I struggle to put something down I look up a quote or line from a poem and it makes me feel good. If I fall off; I am often only a few lines behind and I can pick up where I left off.
I look forward to reading these lines a few years down the road. Some sweet; some bitter; some sad; some poignant but all worth remembering 🙂