I’m 9 years old, standing just behind a velvet rope, and I’m staring up at the skeleton of a dinosaur that is inconceivably old.
I’m 11, unable to tear my eyes away from the soft colors in a gilded-framed landscape.
I’m 14, the farthest away from home I’ve ever been, and I’m one pane of glass from the prop of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber (and severed hand!).
Museums fascinate me. They are collections of the past which humanity deems meaningful, valuable enough to preserve. What goes in a museum will be remembered.
It’s not particularly surprising then that when sophomore year rolled around, I volunteered to be the band and choir historian. My phone’s camera roll is packed with photos of our musicals, concerts and parades. The best of those photos make it into the slideshow that plays at our yearly banquet. Surrounded by far too many varieties of potato-based dishes and cookies, the music program says farewell to the seniors. Sometimes parents cry. For me, it’s bittersweet: Though the year is over, I’m content knowing that I’ve done its memory justice. I am making my personal record of the past, my own museum. And I will hang the band and choir slideshow proudly on its walls, because the ability to reflect on fond memories is a treasure.
Similarly, I’m a historian of my personal life. The scrapbook I’ve made has a black, fake leather cover, and the letters stuck to the front spell out “Emily’s Junior Year,” though they’re beginning to peel off. I theorize that I started it in a subconscious effort to become more like my grandma and her seemingly endless photo albums, but consciously, it’s another attempt of mine to preserve the past. I’ve got a page for the fairs I went to that summer, where the night photos are lit by carnival neon, and a page dedicated to the time my cousins and I went to a charming country pumpkin patch. Our chosen pumpkins have long since rotted away, but the joy of that day stays captured between the covers of my scrapbook.
My efforts to save my own past are motivated by a desire to have some tangible representation of my memories, to preserve them beyond the grasp of time. If I don’t keep a record of my past, who will remember it for me? In saving the memories I have, I can acknowledge the meaning that they hold, and how they have shaped me. Though my photography and scrapbooking doesn’t quite belong in the Smithsonian, they share a common goal: Preserving the past is necessary to ensure that it’s not forgotten, but instead held dear. This I believe.
This I Believe Illinois is NPR Illinois' annual essay program for Illinois high school seniors. An expression of where their minds are as they prepare to enter the adult world. This I Believe was started by radio journalist Edward R. Murrow in 1951 to allow anyone able to distil the guiding principles by which they lived. Special thank you to our sponsors: The Rotary Club of Springfield Sunrise, Illinois Principals Association, Illinois Times, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, University of Illinois Springfield, and Cured Catering.
