As I was considering the various ways in which to tackle this assignment, the idea of a scrapbook seemed to me to best fit what I would enjoy doing, primarily on the basis of the fact that I enjoy making scrapbooks, and I am one of the people who believes that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” With pictures, I can show so much more than I would be able to with words alone.

          Obviously, however, I remember a lot more about my life than is in this book. It would be nice to say that the memories described in this book are only those which are clearest in my mind, most important to me, or most notable, but I don’t really see my past in this manner; instead, my memory recalls an infinite series of events and happenings that I have experienced, all in some way vital to the formation of the self I have become today.

          Thus it turns out that the things in this book are largely those of which

 I have the best photographic representation. I have no way to depict my memory

of looking at my grandfather’s head on my swing set and making fun of his

almost-bald head; I have no way of showing the same house on a hill

with the sun shining down that I drew over and over and over again

at Montessori preschool; I have no way of showing the fear I had when I realized I would be spending the afternoon alone at Montessori one snowy afternoon in January because my parents took my brother home so our family could move.

          I have no way of showing the time I was crying to hard I didn’t see where I was going, so I crashed into the wood part of my bed and had to get stitches; I have no way to show the struggles I had with long division in fifth grade; I have no way to show seventeen years and 8,935,200 minutes that I was conscious during… Instead, I have pages that show parts of those seventeen years, parts that sometimes were merely notable, and sometimes life-cycle events.

          I’m not going to deny to myself that my memories of all these events are completely accurate; in truth, I will acknowledge that my own depiction of the events years later is surely much more idealistic and smoothed over than the events were as they occurred. Then again, we never realize what we have until it is gone; we only know we are in possession of amazement once the shimmering happiness ceases.

          I briefly considered going beyond the present in this timeline, for my life has by no means ended at the age of seventeen. Yet this perhaps seemed too morbid to me, too definite – too anticipatory. I can’t place a name on the future, I can only say what I hope and dream it to be. Yet as much as I hope so many things that I can think of now come true, I also hope that so many more of the impossible, un-thought of dreams play out in the reality of the future, because that variety, that spice, is what does indeed make life interesting. I can’t predict my future, and I don’t want to.

          All I can do is what I have done: reflect upon the past and the ramification of past events upon the depths of my present. The future is the moment following this one, but for now, all that really matters is this one moment. This is my moment, and this is the moment I will live in. The past is support and nostalgia – it is inspiration; the future is the goal. The present is what is.