Scrapbooking Summer Quotes

And the day inevitably comes when the scrapbook of summer, smeared with ice cream slurps and sweat stains, gives way to that new clean white notebook, spine unbroken, begging to be smudged with the enthusiasm of a number two pencil and a mind open to the possibilities.

Everything old people say about time is true. For starters, it flies. As a kid living through semi-eternal summer vacations, this is hard to believe. But as an adult? Get married. Have children. And then sit back, stunned, watching an absolute roar of gorgeous moments and hilarious moments and exhausting moments disappear—quickly and in tragedy or marching off at the traditional pace, but disappear they must. Snap a photo or two. Read verses about futility. Watching one’s small humans age and grow up packs a serious punch. It’s like being stuck in a dream unable to speak, like being a ghost that can see but not touch, like standing on a huge grate while a storm rains oiled diamonds, like collecting feathers in a storm. Parents in love with their kids are all amnesiacs, trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world. Being mortals, having a finite mind when surrounded by joy that is perpetually rolling back into the rear view is like always having something important on the tips of our tongues, something on the tips of our fingers, always slipping away, always ducking our embrace. No matter how many pictures we take, no matter how many scrapbooks we make, no matter how many moments we invade with a rolling camera, we will die. We will vanish. We cannot grab and hold.

She is crouched in the dim, dust-speckled attic of an abandoned house on Sixth Street, surrounded by a small ocean of books and papers, hastily scrawled notes, and half-written spells for rust and sleep and sunlight, for changeling children and flying brooms. Candle-stubs puddle precariously close to piles of poorly folded cloaks in a dozen shades of charcoal and ink, still smelling of summer. I’m the middle of this mess Bella sits in a ring of salt, fingers cramped around a pen and sleeves rolled to the wrist, trying to ignore the feathered passing of hours. Her battered black-leather notebook is propped against a mug of cold coffee, the pages dog-eared and marked. It occurs to Bella that if their plan goes awry, it might be the only surviving record of events that isn’t skewed by Gideon Hill’s propagandizing. It isn’t much—part memoir, part grimoire, interspersed with rhymes and witch-tales, a scrapbooked record of their summer—but her fingers trail lovingly over the cover.

It isn’t much—part memoir, part grimoire, interspersed with rhymes and witch-tales, a scrapbooked record of their summer—but her fingers trail lovingly over the cover.