Nancy Underriner hasn?t seen her grandson in nearly 13 years.
She has a gift for him, if she ever sees him again: a scrapbook to help him remember the first years of his life ? when she was a part of it.
“I couldn?t get through one page without crying,” says Underriner, of Reisterstown. “I don?t know if I could have done it on my own. But I look at it now through my grandson?s eyes. Can you imagine if you can?t remember the first five years of your life and then someone presents you with it?”
Her grandson, Bridger Kluczyk, turned 18 Sunday. He lives in Montana with Underriner?s son and daughter-in-law.
A rift developed between Underriner and her son, she says, because he didn?t want her spending so much time with his son. In 1995 she went to court to try to get visitation time. Her son then vowed she would never see her grandson again.
“It?s just a sad situation,” Underriner says. “It seems unreal. I sit and I can?t believe it half the time.”
It took her 12 years to put together a 100-page scrapbook of Bridger?s first years, when he would spend three or four days a week at his grandmother?s home.
With about five photographs to a page, and memories built into each photograph, it was a tedious but worthwhile process, she says.
“It?s therapeutic; you just feel that you?re doing something wonderful,” Underriner says. “It?s a living history.”
She worked with Peggy Wills, a consultant for Creative Memories, an international scrapbooking company based in St. Cloud, Minn., to make her album.
Wills works out of her Finksburg home and says scrapbooks are more than just a trendy hobby.
“I also hate to use the term ?scrapbooking? because what Creative Memories focuses on is not the crafty part, but the celebration of a person?s life through photos and stories,” Wills says.
Now that Bridger has turned 18, he isn?t lawfully bound to listen to his father ? so he can meet his grandmother.
“I?m just praying that if that is God?s will, he?ll bring us together,” Underriner says.
