In A Box Marked "Family Pics"
There were so many pictures, and stories, that our heads were spinning.
Spending time with our aging parents in Reno, my sister and I were helping them organize memorabilia. Part of this venture, entailed carrying in the boxes, marked “Family Pics” from the tin shed at the back of their mobile home. “This should be interesting,” I said, looking at the seven cardboard boxes we managed to wrestle into their tiny living room. Settling onto the floor, cross-legged, with our parents in their easy chairs, we began unraveling our family history, snapshot by snapshot. We learned more about the personalities of our family members, than we had previously known. My parents had met at a dance, in Capitola, when my father was in the Navy. WWII was ending, and he was going back to Connecticut to enroll in a submarine school. Ten days after they met, they ran away to Reno, in a snowstorm, without their parents’ blessings, and got married. Five years, and five children later, we were a bustling family, back in Santa Cruz. There were so many pictures, and stories, that our heads were spinning, but one thing, especially, was puzzling us. We had a stack of pictures left over, in which nobody recognized the subjects. Who were these “mystery” people? My father came up with the most likely answer. “You see,” he said, “ Your grandmother loved to shop at rummage sales. When she saw a nice frame, at a reasonable price, she would buy it, and toss the old picture into a box.” And there you have it. These people were complete strangers. My sister and I thought of posting these pictures in our annual family newsletters, with bogus stories about these “relatives,” but eventually came to our senses, and thought better of it.
Ah..I hear you, Linda! I have a hard time tossing pictures, but that is on my “to do” list. The one I keep copying every year!
What a story! And your mom taking a frame but unwilling to throw away photos of strangers... my husband and I have had a longstanding discussion about our taking "images" of people and how difficult it is for us to throw away those images, because they are human beings. Now, my having to go through my own parents' and in-laws' piles of old photos recently, my theory is still correct: It hurts to throw away photos of people we don't recognize, or of duplicates of the photos we keep. My younger daughter solved it by telling me to mail her all my "extras" ! So I did, and she's enjoying just looking at all the old extra pics....and I'll let her decide if and when to toss 'em!