Shortly after my mom had Corey, she
went to a Relief Society activity where the sisters were making ceramic picture
frames. They were decorative white oval
frames with gold spray touch up. They
would then house all of the 8X10 school (and pre - school) portraits which came
home with us.
In order to make them fit into the frame,
mom would cut the corners of our school photos and tape them to the back of the
frame. By the time Kayla came along,
another frame had to be added.
It wasn’t
quite the same. The mold itself seemed
to match but rather than white with gold spray, it came out more like white and
gold mixed producing an antique white or an ugly urinated looking almond/cream
type color.
The frames were arranged in a circle. I think I was at the top. My brothers at either side and Kayla’s yellow
frame at the bottom. Over the years mom would update the photos – even after we
each got married and left the nest. For a while they were
displayed over the stairs. Unfortunately
each of us seemed to bump into them.
Eventually one did get knocked down and broke.
A new frame was purchased. But it wasn’t ceramic. It was still the same
oval shape as the rest. But it appeared
to be wooden – though I don’t think it was (is). Patrick’s photo was put into the new frame as
he had been responsible for the broken one.
His picture hung at the bottom.
Kayla’s frame got moved to be over my photo
which remained at the top with Corey and Kayla on either side. After we added a room to the house, the
photos and frames were moved to a wall next to the sliding door and remained
there until last week – just before the move to assisted living.
Sunny had taken down all the photos to put
them up in mom’s new room. Sunny did an
awesome job with decorating and arranging the photos. It is one of her MANY talents.
Corey wanted the photos and photo albums
and shoeboxes of photos and so forth. I
offered to scan them for everybody. I
have found most of his school (and before school) pictures. I had scanned most of mine already – though not
as many 8X10.
Many of those school portraits came out with a
more butchered shape than some others.
Funny to go through them now and have all these cornerless school
portraits. I’ve scanned them as they’re
the largest. I find the wallets don’t
always transfer with the pixel difference.
There was a power surge last night. The breaker switch went off twice. I stopped scanning after the second
time. And now my machine doesn’t want to
scan. I hope Roland’s got the magic
touch to make it work. I still have so
much left to scan.
I’m not going to do all the baby pictures
of me. Good grief! How many baby pictures does one need? I mean – I realize that babies grow fast and
are forever changing. But that’s day to
day – week to week. I just don't find it necessary for me to hang onto 27 photos that were obviously taken during the same 12 minutes.
For the most part I enjoyed being in the
spotlight. The camera became my friend
and I embraced it. Perhaps I hogged in
the glory as I do believe there may be more pictures of me than my other three
sibs put together. I know for a fact that there are many
more pictures of each of us than of Patrick. If
it weren’t for school pictures, we'd have even less.
As a child, Patrick hated getting his
picture taken. Or maybe my parents just
got bored with photographing their baby on a daily basis. It is uncanny how many of his older photos
look just like Kayla’s two children. It
is also weird to see how major blond we both were. I don’t even remember Patrick ever being
blonde. But we have evidence.
The photos are not being scanned in any
certain order. I will sort it in the
computer – except for the ones I don’t scan – and there have been lots. And with the mother lode of baby photos I
just retrieved of myself – I certainly don’t want to scan all of those.
Corey said he wanted the originals, but I
ended up with seven piles – three which I’d be giving to him. Anything related to Kayla in one pile,
anything to do with Patrick and his family in one pile, anything to do with me
or my family, every other photo went into a box (for Corey) after I scanned
it.
And then there was the pile of either
scenes or unfamiliar faces that I didn’t scan that went into an envelope marked
“Not Scanned” and the final pile went into the garbage initially – but Corey
said he wanted ALL of them. Oh,
right. We’ll just see about that.
Mom was horrible at marking photos. HORRIBLE.
She doesn’t remember things. How
could she possibly identify the people in the photos now? I did manage to scan some photos last night
(before the power surge/scan mess up) of a group of people on the beach. I don’t know how many total. I chose a few of them to scan and email to a
few of mom’s friends to ask if they could identify the people in the photos.
One has not only answered, but enthusiastically
thanked me for the trip down memory lane.
So I now have names for Corey. I don’t know that having the names will
have all that much meaning for him. He
may not want them. If that’s the case perhaps
I should send some of the originals to Erin?
I wonder if she’d even want them.
I’m not through. I haven’t even made a dent. It would take so much longer if I weren’t so
selective. I would have started out more
selective if I had taken the time with it.
This project I’ve assigned myself is huge. But I think it will be worth it.
Corey’s got the largest house of my mom’s
four children. He has no clue what he’ll
be doing with everything he took back – or is taking back rather. He’s still on the road right now. Still in Utah, I’m sure. And may be for some time. He still has to drive through that icy
canyon. The department of transportation
said they haven’t seen this kind of weather for over 30 years. I don’t recall ever having seen it – not in
Utah anyway.
Well, those are today’s thoughts. I will be going through pictures and labeling
the backs of them and sorting them into what will be scanned and what won’t.
I’ve also come across an attempted
biography I had done on my very first word processor. A "Brothers" that I truly
loved. The printer was less than desirable. It seems almost humorous to look at the print right
now.
Perhaps I will challenge myself and typing
skills and type it into Word. I saved it
upon floppy disc initially. But I don’t
have access to a Brother’s Word Processor so that I may open it. Well if I still had one. I find that floppy discs haven’t worked out
all that well for me. I had saved many
throughout the years. I threw them all
out just a couple of years ago.
More to come. May not be soon, however. It is kind of fun
going down memory lane. But some things that were saved have turned out quite
pathetic from my point of view. My 50
year old point of view as opposed to my naïve twenties. Boy, was I clueless growing up.
