We don’t accomplish anything in this life alone…and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.       -Sandra Day O’Connor

A while ago, I happened upon an old boyfriend, actually my very first boy friend, talk about a blast from the past! Anyway in conversing with him, he reminded me of a ritual we used to have whilst we dated back in the day, and it was way way back trust me!  According to him, we both kept diaries and each week we would write in our prospective diaries and then exchange and keep writing.  He says he still has those diaries; I would love to get my hands on them hint hint! This is the first real memory I have of me writing anything beyond required school work.  Thank you to my old boyfriend (name withheld) but he knows who he is, thank you for the memories.  At this juncture let me thank all the people who have walked with me in my life and are the living archives and testament to who I used to be then! You have all helped define who I am now!

A while later I started rummaging through my old books and documents and discovered more diaries and journals (I call them journals now because I am much more mature).  It was awesome to peruse them; they took me back in time to my youth and to my experiences.  Reading the journals reminded me, where I was and my perspective of the world at a particular time!  This piece is not about boyfriends, more about how we keep our memories and retrieve them to help us tell the stories of our lives.  Remember the saying “You are surely dead the day no one talks about you”. If one is not able to revisit the past, how do they ensure they don’t repeat mistakes, how do they pass on the lessons they have learned? How do they revisit their youth and fond moments and memories, those ones that make us chuckle and feel glad we have lived and experienced?

So according to my memories, I have been writing for a very long time, I just did not define it as such.  I have written about most phases in my life since puberty and luckily I have been able to retain some of those writings.   I can go back to them from time to time and have a good laugh or cry depending on the time and circumstances documented.  I realize that I have always written as a way to get perspective of myself and my surroundings, written to document exciting things that happened, and as a way to de-clutter my brain. 

 One of the journals I happened upon documented the time when I discovered that my Angel Tween was going to be.  I wrote in that journal almost every day for nine months and for a while after, until the parenting thing either got overwhelming or the need to write was gone.   Rediscovering that particular journal was very exciting, my angle Tween and I have in recent times read the journal together and had such fun revisiting my thoughts and fears during those nine months.    Reading the journal again took me back to that period of time, when I was carrying a baby in my womb, and I was coming into my own as a woman.  Documenting that time allowed me to go back to being pregnant again, minus all the pain and discomfort, it was surely a time of great anticipation and I am glad that I have retained the memories of probably one of the most important moment in my life.

I have been writing for a while, and I even know why I write, I understand what my writing does for me and my hope is that  as I share it with people, it gives them inspiration and some level of enlightenment and you get to know me a little bit more.  I believe that many people in the world have kept memories of times past; be it writing, painting, poetry, doodles, anything that allows them to go to bygone eras.  Memories that they have archived in their own special way, to assist them as they tell the story of their lives; my girlfriend told me that she has kept her archives through her friends and loved ones, she is lucky enough to have kept lifelong friends and she states that through them, through remembering times they shared, she is able to revisit her past in a wonderful companionable way. The way of the African people to pass on information from generation to generation, was to tell stories, stories about what used to be, stories with a message, a caution, happy stories of celebration or sad stories of a woeful time in the past.  These story telling sessions, ensured that we communicated and passed on information. This process gave form to our stories, like a tapestry interwoven and added to in bits and pieces by different people at different times, all depicting our heritage. 

In the present day the art of storytelling is not very popular, and unless like my friend you are fortunate enough to have retained friends for a life time, all who have good memories of what was; then a lot of who we were may be lost.  This is unless, through your life, you accepted to be the custodian of our own memories.    Many of us have embraced that responsibility and are the sole custodians of our pasts.  We have found other forms of memory storage; some in the form of taped conversations, some videos, some in photographs capturing moments as a way to retain these memories.  Many of us keep it all away carefully to revisit when we can. Keep your story alive, document it in your own special way so that others in the future may benefit from it as well, add to the overall tapestry of life!