Friday Family Photo--the Italy Album of 2008

Last night on our tour through our photo albums we went back to Italy, June 2008.  However, because I was hospitalized when we returned to Columbus, Bob did all the arranging of the hundreds of photos.  Nothing was written in the album, and after nine years we were a little fuzzy on the details. Was it Sorrento, Positano, Isle of Capri, Pompeii, Perugia, Assisi or Orvieto?  We dug through some boxes and photo disks today to see if we could find where the digital photos were--I had probably 15 on my blog posts I wrote after we returned. Maybe 200 in the album. And we found a box with probably another 200-300 photos.   We were able to find only those photos, and think that's because I wrote the blogs while we were in Lakeside, and the digital copies are on the old, old computer. Finally, after going through a stack of disks in my office I found one labeled, Italy 2008. I spent some time and finally got them downloaded to this computer. However, these photos are from the blogs I wrote in June 2008.  It was fun to look through that album--it was a great trip.

A page in the album, silent.

Map of the Amalfi Coast

Positano on Amalfi Coast

Orvieto on the last day

Lunch with tour friends in Florence

Bob with painted cow on Isle of Capri

The albums of Haiti mission--Monday Memories

We've been trying to look at our albums (about 70 of them) each evening. We aren't using any particular order, so we chose Haiti for Sunday evening. Bob has been volunteering in Haiti for 10 years with a team from our church, Upper Arlington Lutheran Church. One of our pastors, Dave Mann and his wife Pam, were missionaries there for about decade, and are now back in Columbus working at our church with the large international community in Columbus. Huges Bastien is the director of the school, Institution Univers. In recent years the team has been getting smaller as attention to other destinations grows, so it's doubtful they will go this year, at least not in the spring.  The team is still looking at the possibility of a fall trip if you are interested.  Ten years of service means we have a lot of photo albums about Haiti, and we looked at 2007 and 2009. Two of the 2009 graduates, Zeke and Frandy, came to Akron to live and study after graduation, and visited with us twice, in our Lakeside home, and at Christmas that year. Six graduates of the school who went on to get college degrees have returned to work at the school. There are now 2,600 students at Univers, and each year they have to turn down applicants.  COCINA raises money to support the school and students.

Zeke and Frandy at Lakeside in 2009

Pam Mann and Huges Bastien, director of Institution Univers

Our album of Christmas photos

Album of Christmas greetings.  College roommate Dora and her family

 Our project of looking at an album every evening is moving rather slowly.  We're not doing them in any order--so Thursday evening we did our September 2015 trip in Spain--Madrid, Cordoba, Granada, Murcia, etc.  Then last night we did the album of friends made over the years who sent photos with their Christmas cards. If we have earlier photos such as high school friends for both of us—Dick Green and Duke Low for Bob, and JoElla, Sylvia and Lynne for me—I’ve included those too. But I noticed that there were no photos after 2008. So today I got down the box of Christmas letters I save (I have trouble throwing away the printed/written word) and pulled out the photos, writing on them which I should have been doing long ago and matching up to the letters.

So I also spent some time rereading the letters, but not as much as I thought I would. My eyes would sort of glaze over and soon the trips to Europe from Nelson Potter, Jr. and the grandchildren from Lakeside neighbors who were were 3 in 2008 and 10 in 2016, and the career changes of Marie Peterson’s son, the move to Colorado or Florida, and the pets who died since the last letter, and weddings of children and grandchildren and how they said good-bye to grandma, and the obituaries of the Crabbs all started to bunch together. It’s stirred up the memory of Mom and I going through all the letters and cards in 1983 that Grandma Bessie saved, reading them once, and then disposing of them or returning them to sender. Then I did it for Mom’s letters and cards in 2000 after her death, taking home all the letters (about 40 years) I’d written to them. So. . . I will probably shred the letters now to save my daughter that job.  I knew the people who had sent cards and letters to my mother and grandmother.  If I can’t bring myself to re-read the letters of friends who were fine in 2008 and now have Alzheimer’s Disease and don’t know their own kids, I’m sure I’m doing my daughter a favor by giving them a proper, respectful burial now.

The prompt today from Tweetspeak, a poetry site, was "Things Invisible." Those letters and cards were invisible in the guest room closet, stored on the top shelf in a green basket. I didn't have to think about them.

Things Invisible Poetry Prompt from Tweetspeak
Old Christmas letters, cards and photos.
The basket was in the closet for years.
Invisible since placed there.
Visible only when I added more.
Then things became invisible again.

I took it down from the top shelf.
Sneezed a little from the dust.
Struggled past the seasonal clothes,
ornament boxes waiting for next year,
Wrapping paper, sacks, and ribbons.

Sisters, brothers, aunts, and parents.
College roommates, business partners,
Lakeside neighbors, cruising colleagues,
In-laws, cousins once or twice removed.
Nieces, nephews, her cats and his dogs.

Babies born now twenty eight,
Businesses launched now closed.
Pintos and spaniels at Rainbow Bridge.
Career changes, tenure, promotion,
Divorces, weddings, and Alzheimer’s.

Trains across the Canadian Rockies,
Ships around Alaska’s glaciers,
Log cabin in the Wisconsin woods,
Hiking and biking through Arizona.
RV parks in Florida, cello concerts in Michigan.

A fall off a step at his son’s home,
Hospice now for sister Barbara,
Chemo recovery, tests are good.
How long has it been since we saw you,
Let’s get together after New Year.

My old bones pause on the step ladder,
Old memories folded together.
Blending 2016, 2010,
1987, thirty years.
Things become invisible again.

A new project for the Lenten season

While moving and rearranging books, furniture, paintings, and memorabilia, I counted about 70 photo albums. So we are going to spend some time each evening looking at them and reminiscing.  We started with one of the fattest, but not oldest.  When my parents died, I scooped up some of the extra family photos and sort of made a photo genealogy of them, my siblings, their grandchildren and great grandchildren. There are some duplicates because some were ours, and some theirs.  This should be great fun, and challenge our memories. Especially those trips we took in the 60s and 70s and the only photos are buildings with no information.

Various albums awaiting some action

This album is a catch-all beginning with my parents' wedding

  

   

Our wedding in Mt. Morris, plus dances at U. of I.

Stuff

The only problem with downsizing is. . . stuff. I've counted 70 photograph albums (don't tell me to put them on disk--we did that for one Haiti trip and it was a lot of work). I'm withdrawing about 200 books and don't even see space on the shelves. Then there's the scrapbooks of hand made and artist friends' cards. And my grandmother's childhood scrapbooks and clippings now 135 years old. Half of you can identify; the other half just pitch memorabilia. I've got 3-4 boxes of cards, many from our parents who have been gone about 15-20 years.  My mother-in-law always underlined every word--I thought it a little strange at the time, but now I think it's sort of sweet. 

Sorting, stashing and trashing

We (or more accurately, he) packed up the tree and poinsettias to go back to the garage attic today. I had thought that since it is shedding, this might be the year to pitch it, but he said no, it could go another year.

Today I pulled out the extended-family and friends photo albums and was determined to insert the photos we got for Christmas. Nothing is easy, however. I hadn't done this since 2003. I have two family/sibling albums, mine and my mother's (which I had made for her because she always threw photos into a box). So I also spent time combining those albums into a notebook of ungodly dimensions. It's very painful for me to give up anyone's history or photo, but I just had to make some decisions. We had 13 years of annual photographs for one family (not related), so I selected the oldest and newest and a few in between. The baby in the 1993 card now looks older than her three older sisters. Some album pages were in terrible shape. JoElla, my friend from grade school and my college roommate, kept falling out--or her 3rd grade class photo did--now she's a grandmother and I have those photos too. So I pulled out some double side tape and she's in there for good! I inserted a loose photo of my sister bottle feeding her grandson at my house in 1993 and his photo at 17 with his family. Time warp! I've finally wised up after 50 years and I just write the date on the photo--nothing worse than trying to figure out the date from the shades of hair, the shoulder pads, or lack of hair. The worst part was finding spaces for families that have divorced. Or people who have died. Makes me so sad. Our good friends in 1987 with 2 toddlers and a baby looking so happy, and again in 2000 when the oldest was heading off for college, and now it's all gone. I found the wedding invitation from the early 60s sent to my parents from my cousin--I think I'll send it to his daughter who lives here in Columbus.

Time. It just goes too fast, doesn't it?

Christmas 1965, Champaign, IL