We talk a lot about the mental load of motherhood.
The appointments. The grocery lists. The birthday parties. Remembering that it’s water day at daycare and you need to pack an extra set of clothes, or that it’s Soccer Shots Day and your child needs to wear the right shirt. Knowing when the kids need new pajamas, shoes, or socks. Somehow always being the first person to realize we’re almost out of laundry detergent, toothpaste, or medicine.
It’s the invisible list constantly running through our heads. And while every bit of that is real, lately I’ve started wondering if there is another side of the mental load we don’t talk about as much.
I started thinking about it while doing one of the very things that had been sitting on my mental to-do list: transitioning my boys’ closets.
As I packed away another round of clothes Bennett had outgrown and pulled out the next size, I found myself holding outfits that once belonged to my oldest son, Theo. I could immediately picture him wearing them. How little he was. What stage of life we were in. Memories I hadn’t thought about in years suddenly came flooding back because of a tiny shirt.
And now, Bennett was about to wear it.
There I was, emotional over a pile of toddler clothes, when I realized that somewhere between remembering doctor appointments, daycare spirit weeks, and whether we have enough milk to make it through the weekend, I had quietly taken on another role.
The family memory keeper.
The same brain carrying the mental load is also carrying the memories. And sometimes, it’s hard to separate the weight of having to remember everything from how special it is to be the one who gets to remember it all.
I’m the person who remembers the exact date Theo took his first steps. I remember that he used to sing “keenaw” (his version of the clean-up song) at the end of every meal to tell us he was done. I remember listening to “Wheels on the Bus” approximately 200 times a day and reading Goodnight Hockey so often at bedtime that neither of us needed the book anymore.
I remember that bedtime required Blankey, Teddy, and Lamby. All three. No negotiations.
And now, I’m storing a whole new set of memories.
Bennett and his emotional support TV remote that, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, helps us get him into his car seat. The little dance he does when we sing, “Go Benny, go Benny.” His deep appreciation for french fries and mac and cheese. The huge smile that takes over his entire face the second you say, “Say cheeeeese!”
None of these things are written on a calendar.
They’re just stored somewhere in me.
I’ve always been the picture-and-video person in our family. Probably to the point of being slightly obnoxious. If we’re at an event or with people who don’t document things the same way I do, I sometimes wonder if everyone is secretly thinking, Does she really need another picture?
The answer is apparently yes.
Taking pictures and videos has become so automatic that sometimes I have to stop myself and wonder: Am I preserving this memory, or am I so focused on documenting it that I’m forgetting to actually be in the moment?
I’ve felt both sides of that question.
With Theo, I captured his literal first steps on video. With Bennett, I didn’t.
And as the person who has somehow appointed herself the family memory keeper, there is a tiny part of me that feels guilty about that.
As our family has grown and life has gotten busier, I’ve realized I don’t always have the same time or mental bandwidth to give memory keeping the same energy I once did. Bennett’s monthly milestone pictures sometimes felt like another thing on my to-do list. Planning birthday parties, something I genuinely love, has felt heavier this year with two kids. I put pressure on myself to make every birthday as special, or somehow even better, than the year before.
And don’t even get me started on choosing coordinating outfits for family pictures. A beautiful tradition I love that, once a year, makes me want to rip my hair out.
There are absolutely parts of the mental load of motherhood I would happily hand over. Scheduling dentist appointments? Yours. Remembering when we’re almost out of toothpaste? Also yours. Keeping track of the dog’s heartworm and flea and tick medicine? Please. Take it.
But the stories?
I’m not sure I’d ever want to give those away.
I’ve always been the traditions person in our family. I write birthday letters to my boys every year. I save birthday cards and invitations in boxes so we can remember each party theme. I love our annual splash pad birthday party and watching the things we do around holidays slowly become our family’s traditions.
Every year, I make a video for each of my boys using one second from every day of their year. It takes time. It takes remembering to actually record the videos. And every single year, I watch the finished version and cry as I see just how much they changed when I wasn’t paying attention.
I think that’s the strange thing about motherhood. You are there for every day of it, yet somehow the growing still sneaks up on you.
I think somewhere along the way, I started confusing documenting a memory with keeping it.
Because when I think about the things I’m most afraid of forgetting, they’re rarely the perfectly posed pictures.
It’s Theo singing “Danger Zone” in the car on the way to daycare. It’s what Bennett looked like as a newborn after bath time. It’s the phases that felt so normal while we were living them and then quietly disappeared without me realizing they were over.
That’s the hard part about watching your kids grow. It’s already difficult to remember exactly who they were in every stage. And once a stage is gone, you know you’ll never get to experience that exact version of them again.
Maybe that’s why I take so many pictures.
I’m scared that if I don’t document it, there will be a small memory that felt important enough to save in the moment, but one day I won’t be able to remember.
But maybe being the family memory keeper doesn’t mean perfectly documenting every moment.
I don’t remember Theo saying “keenaw” because I have the perfect video of it. I remember because, for a season of our lives, it was part of every dinner.
I don’t remember Blankey, Teddy, and Lamby because I wrote it in a baby book. I remember because I searched our house for them approximately 400 times before bedtime.
And even though I didn’t capture Bennett’s first steps on video, I still remember how proud he looked when he realized what he could do.
Maybe our children don’t remember their childhoods by accident. For the first few years of their lives, someone has to remember for them.
Someday, my boys will ask me what they were like when they were little. They’ll ask about the stories they were too young to keep for themselves.
And I’ll get to tell them.
Maybe that’s the part of the mental load of motherhood we don’t talk about enough. Somewhere between keeping everyone alive and getting them where they need to be, moms quietly become the keepers of childhood.
And of all the things motherhood has asked me to carry, that’s one responsibility I’ll never want to put down.
