This month’s guest blog is written by Rosalind Furlong, a professional photographer, who captures people and memories for a living and shares here how she wishes she had dealt with her children’s memories.
My name is Rosalind and I am a hoarder. I’m not quite sure how it started. Perhaps it was being brought up by parents who lived through the deprivation of the second world war and who took the attitude that something might just come in useful someday. Maybe it was watching Blue Peter as a child and realising that an empty box or toilet roll tube might turn into some beautiful and functional object that would last a lifetime, if only I had some sticky-backed plastic. Or perhaps it was just a desire to hold onto things as I grew up, so that I could remember the past better.
If I hadn’t married and had children I think I would have been a prime candidate for ’Britain’s Worst Hoarder’ but as it is, all my clutter gets shoved into my study and friends always comment on how tidy my house is; the study door is firmly shut. Fortunately, my now-adult children have not inherited my hoarding tendencies, although I am aghast when they want to throw out what had once been treasures. However, as my husband so helpfully says, if you keep everything, you keep nothing. I have boxes of assorted memorabilia from my life but have not inspected them for years. They just sit, cluttering up the giant cupboard he gifted me to accommodate my hoard.
Some years ago when the children were little I realised I simply couldn’t manage to keep every last babygro, every little dress, every toy train. It became clear that it was not the object per se that I needed, but just the memory of the object, and so before any of their childhood possessions left the house for the great charity shop in the sky (OK, high street), I photographed them.
This obviously became its own chore – bags of clothes would sit for months before I summoned up the energy to go through them and photograph them. But this I did and now, nestled somewhere on assorted hard drives which house my professional photography, is a ton of photos of their clothes, their teddies and the rest of their toys. The photos aren’t artful – I didn’t have time for that. They are just a record. Incidentally, while I was typing that last sentence my husband came into my study and picked up a couple of badges I’d saved from a recent throw-out by the kids. ‘Why are you keeping this Team GB badge?’ he asked. ‘Why are you keeping the junior ranger badge?’ I don’t know, but perhaps they will become treasured possessions of our great-great-grandchildren. Although I suspect our kids will have chucked them out long before then. Anyway, back to the photos…
So there they are, sitting on the hard drives; someday, some day in the future when I have simply nothing else to do, when my endless to-do list is finally all done, I will go through the photos and make a book of each of my children’s possessions, and hopefully that will be the thing that their great-great-grandchildren will treasure.
Now, of course, I realise that this wasn’t the best way to record the objects - just a toy or a dress sitting on the ground. I should have taken more photographs of the children – of them in their clothes, of them playing with their toys, of them snuggled in their beds with their teddies. When children are little it’s hard to imagine a day when they won’t still be little. There’s always tomorrow to take the photos. Or the day after that. But suddenly they’re grown up and even I, a professional photographer, realise that I didn’t take nearly enough photos of them. Their toys and teddies and dresses are gone, their bedrooms are adult bedrooms, their childhood is over, packed away into the cupboards of our memories. Photos are all we have. Take photos. Lots of them. Not just of your children, but your partner, your parents, your friends, anyone you love. Anyone you might lose. Those photos will be your great-great-grandchildren’s treasured possessions. And if you don’t know how to take good photos, ask me and I’ll do it for you.
If you would like to find out how Rosalind can capture all your memories, you can find her at https://www.rosalindfurlong.com/ and 07786 512492.
