Replantings

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Fuzzy photo with youngest daughter Lenora on the steps of our tiny beach cottage. Pre 1983.

There are positive moments that leave me with a smile too. While I skip the thousands of shots of trains, I do try to scan every shot with a family member in it. Do I remember this? Of course not. But I do remember that this lovely daughter was always chewing me out about my plants. I didn’t water them enough. I needed to repot them. I needed to pick off all the dead leaves. I was a terrible mother and let her do them.

Diaspora

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I was terribly moved to discover the photos of friends at my fiftieth birthday party. Truly stirred to sadness. It was only twenty years ago, and all these wonderful old friends were in my life often every day. Since that time, all but a few have scattered to the far corners of the country…or even farther, and many have died.

I write about it on my blog Postcards in more detail, but the details don’t obscure my pain at losing this special extended family.

Identify

On the left is Margaret Millicent Barnum and to her right is her brother Charles Norman Barnum. Taken in the 1900's. Milwaukee. I do not know who their two friends are.

On bad days, I'm determined to scan five images. On good days, I'll do more. I have to make the time to sort and identify who the folks are in the shots when I do them. I lose it all otherwise. Since I'm pretty lost anyway, I'd rather not pass on acres of unidentified folks to my kids.

One would ask, "Who's that, mom?"

I can hear the converstation now. "I haven't the faintest idea, dear."

Verisimilitude

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Granddaughter Stassa with the Kassel Castle growing out of her head. December, 2011.

I’m reduced to doing selective scanning. In the first box of images, where I was a far more conscientious scanner, I ground to a stop when I got to the first San Diego Train Fair. Yes, I carefully scanned any shots with either G or me in them. No, I didn’t’ scan the multitudes of photos of train car after train car.

I asked G if he wanted me to keep the photos. Nope.

So now I have begun work on the second box of photographs, and I find I’m easing into the old, “I don’t give a fig.” Here I have thousands of photographs in front of me yet to scan, and I’ve adopted a very poor attitude about all this. I’m cheating with my selective choices. Shouldn’t I scan each and every shot keeping the historical verisimilitude intact? Company picnics?

Not if I want to survive this experience.