Making Memories...

For two years, every morning we drove to school. Twenty minutes of ‘our time’.

Sometimes, we drove leisurely and sometimes, in a mad rush. Samaira, now in preschool, was quick to point out that I had jumped the red light and I did a bad thing (something she had learnt recently).

En route, we had intense discussions, right from what a metro train is, to ‘heated’ debates on whether the Minions liked bananas or papayas. On some days we sang funny versions of “Let it go” from the movie she loved- Frozen, and sometimes we played Name- Place-Animal-Thing.

Ironically, my favourite mornings were those when she simply took her princess print blanket and slept off. On those days, I would let her sleep it out, till the clock struck 8:30 am, while I would simply watch her sleep. After which I would tap her gently, and carry her all the way to the school gate while she continued to be half asleep.

“Bye Boooo!” I would yell at the top of my lungs, when she would reach the gate of the school building, as she smiled, and sometimes she slapped her forehead playfully with her palm, making it evident that she was embarrassed of my antics.

On the last day of school before the summer vacations set in, I dropped her, as usual to the gate and waited for her to turn around and say goodbye, and then it hit me that our daily routine would now be broken. 

What hit me even harder was that from the next semester on, her school timings would be from noon to evening and I wouldn’t be in a position to go everyday and drop her, because my office timing wouldn’t permit.

I quickly had the urge to click a picture, maybe take a video of us travelling in the car, or a selfie of us, maybe ask one of the parents at the gate photograph us walking. But I lost the moment as she disappeared into the hallways. 

She was gone and I didn’t even have a single memento of these wonderful moments we shared every day, for two whole years.

As I walked back to the car, I thought of the days when my father walked me, to my preschool. I clearly remember some moments, where a particular patch of the road was tiled, and I always jumped ‘in’ the large square tiles, trying not to to set a foot on the cemented crevices, some funny game I invented in my head.

On days we were early, we took slight detour and walked through a garden instead of the road. Those were my most cherished moments.

I have no photographs of those days but they are clearly etched in my memory, and many a times I recreate those memories using my own imagination. 

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I smiled.

Having no pictures was a good thing!

With cameras in cell phones these days, every moment is ‘so defined’.

Right from how kids are born, to all activities in vacations, to clothes we didn’t buy (just wore in changing rooms), small events, a drive to a restaurant nearby, an impromptu meeting with a friend- We have a picture for everything, which defines each moment in HD Quality.

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This summer we went for a short vacation, and hardly clicked any pictures. 

We came back with not a disc full of pictures, but a heart full of memories. 

Memories - that were open to imagination. 

Things we did, and places we saw, that could be tweaked, manipulated, and blown out of proportion using vague facts and our own versions of what happened.

To top it up, at the end of the vacation, we drew a picture of the parts she enjoyed the most.

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Try this experiment....

In this age of social media, where sharing your pictures on popular image sites and apps, judge your social status- Do something different, and “click a picture from your heart”.

So the next time you see your child do something for a first time. That moment you want to treasure forever. Don’t reach out to your pocket for your camera, or cell phone.

Take your hand, shut your eyes and capture that moment in your heart.

That moment is what you will treasure forever.

A moment that you can change the brightness not of the lighting, but of the mood. Add filters of joy and happiness. Crop out the noise and maybe add a sound track of laughter. 

Finally, Tuck it down memory lane.

That moment doesn’t need to be judged by likes, but by love.

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As for me, I can always tell my daughter about the adventures we had when I dropped her to school every day (Like the a day a tiger crossed our path :-p) . She might get bored of hearing them every time and might just shut me up, but since there will be no visual proof of them, I can always come up with a new story about those days to get her interested again.

The moments that I will treasure in my heart forever till my last day.

The moments I will see when I shut my eyes for the last time and say good bye to the world.

Moments beyond pages of photo albums, ahead of timelines on my facebook page, and larger than what any memory card can fit in.

How many such moments do you have?