Last month, I went to a scrapbooking retreat.

Now, I know that to the majority of the world, that’s a pretty strange idea. It’s maybe akin to someone going to a furry convention?

(Scrapbookers aren’t that strange!)

But really, there are conventions and retreats for everything, and I’d love to go to more, especially writing conventions. And I’d totally go to a running retreat.

A scrapbooking retreat was pretty awesome though.

It was hosted by the people who make a scrapbooking podcast, called The Scrap Gals. I’ve spoken on the podcast a few times, and become friends with many of the other listeners, and, perfectly, the retreat was in Salt Lake City.

So I went!

I confess to being slightly terrified as I was driving to the hotel. It’s one thing to “talk” with people online, and it’s entirely another to meet them in person. I’m not naturally a mingler; I’m introverted and a little bit socially awkward and my default assumption is that other people would rather hang out with someone else. So walking into that hotel lobby, which I knew would be full of other scrapbookers, was fairly intimidating for me. (Especially since I realized, as I was walking in, that I didn’t put any make up on that morning!)

But I took a deep breath and reminded myself that other people were likely feeling exactly the same way I was, and I walked over and said hello.

And then it was just two and a half days of scrapbooking and new friends and putting real-life faces to people I previously only knew through photographs.

I’ve never been to another scrapbooking retreat, so I can’t compare it to anything else, but I can say that it was pretty fantastic. There were tons of product give-aways, a darling goodie bag with my favorite kind of cup and a t-shirt, a few classes (just the right amount, I thought), and time and space to scrap. I got to hang out with some of my scrappy friends from Utah, Jen, Jana, and Kim.

Kim! Why are you not in this photo?

I got to talk to the owners of two scrapbook companies I love, Freckled Fawn and Felicity Jane. (It’s a special sort of awesome to be sitting next to the person who designed the supply you’re using on your layout.) The first day, we drove down to Utah County to shop at some scrapbooking stores and then had a lovely dinner at Cantina Grill in Sandy. The rest of the days were spent on scrapbooking. Or talking about scrapbooking. Or talking about life in general. I had a great conversation with Tiffany, one of the podcast hosts, about our favorite books (our taste is nearly identical!) and I got to go running with some people I had only known from Instagram. (Friends who scrapbook and run? Seriously, I can’t even!)

Teri, me, and Kim after running in City Creek. They are FAST!

As a local, I was also there to help out. So I drove around picking up food and other supplies as necessary. There was an urgent need to run to Costco for more chocolate cinnamon bears! I didn’t get many pages finished, but that was mostly because I left my printed journaling at home.

But making layouts—actually scrapbooking—was almost not the point of the scrapbooking retreat. Instead, the point was being surrounded by people who understand you. Sometimes scrapbooking feels like my dirty little secret, like it’s this quirky thing I do that I don’t talk about much because most people don’t get it. Even friends who used to scrapbook with me think it’s strange that I still do it. So to hang out for a weekend with people who I didn’t have to hide my hobby from, people who feel the same as me—well. That, for me, was the best part of the retreat. Being with my tribe.

(My tribe who has now been introduced to chocolate cinnamon bears!)

Near the end of the retreat, we had the opportunity to talk for a few moments about why we continue to scrapbook. I told the story of the day my dad sat and read an entire scrapbook, literally every single word, even though at that point in his Alzheimer’s progression reading was becoming hard for him. He told me I was smart for writing it all down, because maybe one day I would be like him and not be able to remember, but with the scrapbooks I still could. My focus shifted a bit that day; it became less about products and about fitting in with the industry and more about telling my and my family’s stories. It became about being authentic with myself.

Tiffany and Tracie, the creators of the Scrap Gals podcast and retreat hosts

In fact, scrapbooking is so ingrained with who I am that I wouldn’t feel like myself if I stopped doing it.

That’s not a facet of myself that anyone in my everyday life relates to, though. So the scrapbook retreat? And hanging out with people who do related? It was worth the initial heart-pounding anxiety of walking into that hotel. It was validating and joyful and just downright fun.

I’m so glad I went.

A few weeks ago, on a running Facebook group I belong to we were discussing what our running mantras are. It was interesting and motivational to read the words that run through the minds of so many runners, and it left me thinking quite a bit about the power in choosing to encourage yourself. One of the reasons I love running, in fact, is that positivity is an essential quality. If your internal dialogue is negative when you’re running, you won’t run for long, but if you’re cheering yourself on, you keep going.

My running mantra might seem a little bit silly, maybe. Or even conceited, until you know the story behind it. One hot summer day, I was out on a run, one of those painful runs that happen after you’ve been sick for a while, when every single step feels like it should be the last step. I ran past a little girl who was playing in her front yard. She yelled out “you’re really good at running!” to me. Her cheery vote of confidence stuck with me on that run and got me through my painful miles.

And more than ten years later, it’s still with me.

Even though I’m not really “good” at running the traditional sense of the word—I’m not especially fast or graceful; I don’t win races; I don’t have a beautiful runner’s body; heck, sometimes I even twist my ankle and fall without tripping over anything—my running mantra is “I’m good at running.”

When I’m feeling tired during a run, it pops into my head and keeps me going.

When I’m lying in my comfy bed and everything in me wants to go back to sleep, “I’m good at running” gets me out the door.

When I’ve been discouraged by injuries, my mantra has been a form of grace.

I’m good at it not because of athletic prowess but because I do it. Because at least four times a week, I put on my running clothes (“wear something cute and functional” is my getting-dressed-to-go-running mantra!) and I go outside and I run.

And that running is a good, good thing. The fresh air and the exertion and the movement. The chance to think things through, or the chance to shut off every thought except what my body is doing. During a run, my cares fly away behind me and my shoulders grow light. Beating hard, my heart softens. My lungs, tendons, joints, muscles grow strong with miles and miles, as well as my psyche.

I’m good at running because I run.

When I shared this story in the Facebook group, someone commented and said “we never know who we are inspiring when we go running.”

I’d never thought of that experience in quite that light. The cute little girl and her encouraging words inspired me, but maybe I inspire others, too. Maybe the fact that I’m not wiry-thin, and that I run a barely-sub-ten-minute mile (9:30 on a great day) might motivate someone else. Because my averageness in running means that anyone can run.

Everyone can be good at running, too.

At races, I’m reminded of this. There are runners of all shapes and sizes who run every distance, from 5k to marathons (ultras, too, I’d imagine, although I’ve not done one of those yet). Not everyone can run fast enough to win a race, or to qualify for Boston; not everyone can run a full 26.2 race. But you find your place in running, if you give it a chance. You learn, with a sense of relief, that in running, for most of us, who we compete against is only ourselves, and there is a great freedom in that. It isn’t about being pretty or kind or even brilliant; it isn’t about the million things that society tell us we should be. It’s just about moving, it’s just about going out into the world and looking around, it’s about telling yourself you can do something and then finding that you were right. You could.

You can.

I’m still fighting ankle pain (in fact, after I post this I’m going to call and make an appointment with my PT). I’m still building up slowly, both in miles and in run/walk ratio. I’m heavier than I’ve been in nine years. But I will keep reminding myself: I’m good at running. And by doing this, I will continue being a runner.

All day yesterday, I found myself thinking about this post I read on Cathy Zielske’s blog that morning. (I admire Cathy quite a bit, partly because I think if we met in real life she would understand my need to avoid titchy fonts, widows, and bad rags, and I wouldn’t even have to explain what those words meant. So this isn’t me criticizing her ideas; more, it is me exploring my response.) In her post, she writes about how, as the middle-aged mother of two older kids, she is finding that she makes more cards and fewer layouts.

It took me all day to figure out why this made me bristle a little bit.

It’s not that I disagree with anything she said, especially about scrapbooking your adult children. As my kids have gotten older and started leaving home, I do scrap less about their current experiences. This is because I am less involved with their daily lives, which means I have fewer stories to tell and fewer pictures

My dad's old brownie camera

of them. And, the fact is, I’ve made very few scrapbook layouts about experiences my kids have had without me. This isn’t because I make their layouts about me (I try not to), but because I only feel…well, I first wanted to write “capable,” but really, the right word is “responsible”: I feel responsible to tell the stories I know. So even when I have photos of trips they’ve gone on without me, it’s rare that I make a layout with them, because what would I write? So as they go out into the world, I make fewer layouts about them, and what I do make is mostly about holidays, because they are (sometimes) here for them.

But more important is this fact: I’m finding this part of parenting to be far more difficult than I ever imagined it would be. Much of what I am now capable of is telling my reactions to their experiences, which I “witness” mostly through social media and texting. These feel more appropriate in a journal than a scrapbook. Their stories are becoming their stories. Their choices are not really influenced much by me anymore, nor their consequences. I feel less of a responsibility to record their stories for them. Plus, it would just feel sort of…weird, somehow. To try to record things I didn’t experience. Like I was invading their space or controlling their experiences.

All of which Cathy says in her blog post.

I think what made me bristle is the suggestion that once our kids are of a certain age, the need to create scrapbook layouts diminishes and can be replaced by other crafts.

Don’t get me wrong; I do make things besides scrapbook layouts. I made quilts! And sometimes I make cards.

But there is a certain type of satisfaction that scrapbooking gives me. It is something I’ve written about before, the way that it gives me a space to pair a photograph with words; it gives me a chance to write. That matters most to me, more than pretty paper or alphabet stamps or even my current obsession, which is puffy stickers. (Even though those matter, too.)

But there is also something else I get from scrapbooking, and it has something to do with that word: responsibility.

And it also has to do with me and my own quirks, even when I am making layouts for and about my kids, so I know this is my response and not necessarily universal.

One of my clearest memories from my childhood is the day I found an old check register. It was one kept by my dad, so it was in his squared-off handwriting. And it happened to be the register from the months before and after my birth. I don’t remember what checks they actually wrote during that time, but I will never forget the feeling I had, sitting in the basement by the record player looking at that check register. It felt both mysterious and enlightening—that so much had happened not just in the world at large but in my family members’ lives that I didn’t know about or remember. Or that I didn’t exist yet to witness. Maybe it was the first time I realized how small my place in the universe is. (Maybe I was just a weird kid.) But it ignited something within me, a need to know about the things that happened to people I knew before I knew them.

Flash forward roughly twenty years later, to a day not long after my grandma Elsie died. She was a reader, and my dad took on the responsibility of going through her massive collection of books, looking for valuable editions or rare titles. As I am also a reader, I helped him with this task. But I didn’t really care about the books themselves (which were mostly paperback mysteries anyway). What I was looking for was a diary, or a journal, or a date book. Or even a check register. Something written in my grandma’s hand about her life. I assumed that since she was a reader, like me, she’d also be a writer (like me). But if she ever wrote any journals, or any stories about her life, we didn't find them that day.

Now flash forward another almost-twenty years, to the morning my dad died. His brother Roe brought some photo albums to us, photo albums my grandma Elsie had put together. And then, on that morning which was already swimming in tears, I wept other, sweeter ones. Because there they were: her words in her handwriting, telling her story. And telling my dad’s story. Not all of it—barely even anything. But she wrote “beautiful Bryce Canyon” next to some photos of Bryce Canyon, and so I learned that my grandma, like me, loved Bryce Canyon. On the back of a photo of my dad standing next to a tree in her yard when he was middle-aged—perhaps even my age right now—she wrote “Don planted this tree when he was a little boy.” And so I learned that my grandma, like me, looked for patterns and relationships between objects and time and people.

Photos from my grandma's photo album. Yellowed and scratched but so important to me.

(It’s really a shame she died before she learned about scrapbooking. She would’ve scrapbooked the hell out of stuff, I think.)

That is also why I scrapbook: because it raises a sort of desolation in me that none of the people who came before me left a record of their lives. Maybe this is a thing my children will never care about—maybe that desolation is just my quirk. But by making scrapbook layouts I can lessen the possibility of any of them ever feeling that same desolation. So in that sense it is for them—but it’s also for me. Time is circular, remember, or it is somehow, and it feels like I am assuaging that ache in my own heart by making layouts about other people. Which makes no logical sense—but it still makes sense. Heart sense.

Or maybe it’s just that when we are parents, what we try to give our children isn’t necessarily always what they need, but what we needed that no one gave us.

So yes: I can see as my kids get older, I will make fewer layouts. About them. At least, about their current lives. But I still have so many stories to tell. And not just about them, but about me, too.

Sometimes I worry that, when I’m the one who’s passed away, and someone is cleaning out my house, the scrapbooks will feel like a burden. Like my kids will see them as stuff they have to figure out what to do with. I hope that doesn’t happen, but it’s a possibility.

There are a lot of layouts.

But the other side of that fear is hope. Hope that they’ll be glad that some part of their story is recorded. Hope that they’ll be glad that a little part of their mother is put down on paper. Hope, even, in a day sometime past my own death, when a grandchild or a great grandchild discovers their parent’s scrapbook, and then they discover something about me, too. Some similarity, some likeness.

And that is one of the reasons that even as a middle-aged mother, and even when I am actually and literally old, I will still be scrapbooking. Yes, it’s about fulfilling that creative need. But it’s also, for me, about feeling responsible, for whatever reason, for the stories, and for making sure that if someone in the future needs their parent’s story, or their grandma Amy’s, they will have it.

Elsie and me on my 12th birthday.

On Monday afternoon, I was outside mowing the lawn when I started to notice that I needed to snip a whole bunch of daffodils and tulips that had lost all of their petals. This made me think about how fleeting time is. I love spring, the way the light warms up with the air; how trees’ shadows change form from latticework to dappled shade; the way that color returns so slowly but without hesitation until suddenly you notice: color! And the flowers, especially the flowers. Especially daffodils (even more than tulips).  I want them to last forever, but they don’t. They can’t. And maybe if they did I’d get tired of them. But they are ephemeral, and so I love their happy yellow faces, which seem elegant and welcoming all at once.

In my yard, in May, they are all but done, except for a very few left in my back yard, which faces north and is in deep shade and so is like a second, late spring.

I finished mowing and then got out my clippers and started deadheading the daffodils. Tulips, too, and a few last purple hyacinths, now a crisp grey totally devoid of fragrance. It made me a little bit sad, the spring flowers gone so soon, April almost over, the stifling heat of summer on its way. The poem I always misquote started in my head: doesn’t everything end, and too soon? (It’s actually die, not end.) I snipped dead flowers and I thought about the missed opportunities of my life, the mistakes I’ve made, the times I didn’t sit by the daffodils and savor their beauty. Life is bittersweet.

But then I started thinking about something my sister Becky wrote on Instagram, about how everything has a beginning and an end, and finding peace with this cycle (instead of sorrow) is essential to our happiness. So I took a deep breath and I looked around. Yes, that beauty of early spring has passed. But there is still beauty here, too, on the first day of May. Just the light shining through green leaves is enough to break me right open.

So I decided to take some photos of what was beautiful that afternoon, just the things I could see. To savor, to celebrate. To help myself remember that individual beauty is fleeting but the world always holds different forms of beautiful things.

Can dandelions be beautiful? Well, the light shining through these ones in my neighbor’s yard seemed beautiful to me. Did you know that bees are healthier when dandelions are plentiful?

Perhaps I should’ve trimmed these—they are really almost done. But I didn’t. There is just the slightest bit of yellow left, so I left them until next week.

Purple is one of my favorite colors of flowers. I don’t even know what this is called, but it makes me happy.

My dad landscaped our yard with many large stones. When we sold my childhood home last year, I wanted to bring the large pink quartz rock to my house, but it was far too large to move without a backhoe. I settled for this one and one other. It’s like having a bit of my dad with me whenever I am outside.

These iris will bloom soon, but just that ruffled tip…swoon.

This white iris is always the first one to bloom. There are still some bleeding heart flowers left, too. I love it when two plants that don’t usually bloom at the same time manage a simultaneous flowering!

I planted about 25 lilies of the valley, in a damp and shady spot, a few years ago, but only two or three ever came up. Their scarcity makes them sweeter.

Little purple pansies…my grandma used to sing the little song to me, so this is her face in my garden.

What's beautiful in your world?

The book that ruined YA trilogies for me was Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone. I read it not knowing that it was the first book of a yet-unfinished trilogy, and I got to the end (and was left totally hanging) and was so annoyed that I decided then and there that if a book is the first in a trilogy, I’m going to wait to read it until all of the books are finished.

(The strange thing about this is I was never annoyed by having to wait for the next Harry Potter book. Tingling with anticipation, yes. But never annoyed. I think that’s because the whole world was waiting with me and so part of the Harry Potter experience became the waiting. But it’s also because each book has its own denument that works in conjunction with the longer story arc; you finished, say, The Prisoner of Azkaban knowing who Sirius was and seeing him safely off on Buckbeak, with the knowledge that Harry would be waiting out the summer at the Dursley’s house while you waited for the next novel. Sure, you didn’t know what Voldemort would do next, but that part of the story was wrapped up.)

Despite hype, despite my Official Librarian Responsiblities ™, despite terrible, desperate yearnings to read something new, I’ve mostly stuck to my decision. I read Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle thinking sweet, an-already finished trilogy! Except it is actually a tetralogy (four books). I read a few first-in-an-unifinished-trilogy novels when I was doing my presentations at Life, the Universe, and Everything (The Queen of the Tearling falls into that category). But on the whole, I’ve waited for finished trilogies.

I do this mostly because it feels difficult to get back into a story line when a year (or two, or three) has passed, and I’ve found myself going back to reread the first book. This need to re-read frustrates me because there are just so many books I want to read, and I don’t have all day for reading (alas!), so I have to use my reading time efficiently. Partly it’s because of the cliff-hanging ending that’s become so popular. When I finish I am dying to know what happened, but by the time the next book comes out, the energy is lost. If I wait for the third book, I can read all three in a row, without forgetting important details or waiting to see what happened (and then not remembering why I cared).

But here’s the thing: you don’t always know that a book will be the first in a trilogy. Especially when you start it and get sucked in immediately, and it only dawns on you as you draw closer to the end of the book and start realizing there is no way this will be resolved before the end.

This is the British cover, which I like much better than the US version

Take Laini Taylor’s new book, Strange the Dreamer. I’ll tell you right away that I love Laini Taylor. Her Daughter of Smoke and Bone series is one of my favorite YA fantasies. I like her books because they are fantasy that isn’t just reinterpreting the same old motifs or creatures or Tolkien or mythology or whatever. They’re unique creations that still feel real.

So when I heard she had a new book coming out, I really didn’t care what it was about. I just requested it from the library in the hopes that I could be the first on the hold list. (I was, alas, not. I had to wait for four people to read it before me!)

I did read just a little, something about it being about a foundling who becomes a librarian, and a fantastical, beautiful library, and alchemy, and then I just wanted to read it even more.

Strange the Dreamer is about Lazlo Strange, who was adopted by monks as an infant, after his parents were killed in a war. He has always, as long as he remembered, been fascinated by the vanished city of Weep, which used to have a different name that has been forgotten by the world. There are stories about Weep, but only a few: the mighty Tizerkane warriors whose battle-rage is fueled by the bite of a scorpion, and the magical blood candy that can give immortality, and the beautiful architecture of the city. A lucky twist sends young Lazlo to the Great Library of Zosma, where he finds a room filled with books of fantastical stories, some of them about Weep. The librarians recognize him for one of their own, and when he is not working in the library he is reading stories. And it is a hint in one of these stories that lets his whole world break open when something fantastic happens: A delegation of people, including the Godslayer, arrives in Zosma from the city of Weep.

I just loved this book. It reminded me just the smallest bit of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana, what with the forgotten name of the city, and a little bit of The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemison, what with the battle between gods and humans. (Side note: N. K. Jemison's newest trilogy is being wrapped up this summer, and as I've followed my rule on it, I get to read all three in a row. Can't wait!)  But, like her other trilogy, it felt unique and incomparable. I loved both of the main characters, Lazlo and a girl named Sarai. I loved the mythos and world building, the way magic is used and the imagery about the city of Weep. If I had to complain about something, it is that sometimes contemporary language structure from our world seeped into Weep and it always jarred me out of the story, but that is a small thing I don’t think many people will notice in a book that is both entertaining and thoughtful, that illuminates the power and influence that story has in our lives. Yep: I loved it.

Except, you know: I didn’t read enough about it to know that yes, it is the first book in a trilogy.

And it’s not like it’s a difficult thing to share with the reader. It’s as simple as adding a line to the cover: The first book in the __________________ trilogy.

If I had known that I still would’ve tried to be the first reader on the hold list. I would’ve broken my own rule and read it anyway because A—it’s my own rule and B—I love Laini Taylor. But I would’ve read it a little bit differently. Maybe less quickly, more thoughtfully, storing up ideas, clues, and hypotheses. Or maybe just prepared for a cliff hanger.

Because it does end with a cliff hanger.

So! If you are unlike me, and unfinished trilogies just aren’t a big deal to you, but if you are like me and you love & adore a really good YA fantasy…go get your name on the hold list for Strange the Dreamer.

(spoilers follow after this lovely illustration of Sarai, which I copied from Laini Taylor’s blog.)

Since it will undoubtedly be a few years before the next book, here’s a summary of how this first book ends:

Lazlo saved the city from Drave’s bomb by discovering he is also half-God and that his power is controlling mesarthium. He righted the palace and reshaped Rasalas. Sarai fell and died, but Minya captured her soul before she vanished—but she is controlling Lazlo through Sarai with the threat that if he doesn’t do what she wants him to, she will let Sarai’s soul go. The city is not fond of Lazlo’s transformation, but the alchemist had already figured it out.