Big Project

I accepted a project from camp this weekend. They have boxes of slides. Thousands of slides. Slides in slide protectors and placed in binders. Loose slides. Slides in slide boxes. Literally thousands of slides. To some this would be tedious and boring, but I am loving it.

There are slides from the mid 1990s all the way back to the 1950s. There may be older ones, I've just started.

It is so fascinating to see what were common pictures -- pictures much the same as the ones we take today. But the buildings are newer, and the trees are different. It is fun to see the clothes and activities.

Each photo makes me want to do more research. I want to find out more about the history. I have a big project and I am planning on making it bigger. What exactly is the timeline of camp? When did the changes occur? Who was involved? What were the rituals and legends and when and why did they fall out of favor?

But the big take away from looking at these photos? Keep it simple. These photos were before photoshop and are beautiful in their simplicity. I can trust that they are what was happening and not manufactured. There is interest in the honest truth. We all need to take more of those. They will mean more in years to come.

A Drive Through Amish Country

Indiana is not all in the same time zone. Here in the North-Eastern part we are on East Coast time. In the Northwestern part, where I am from, they are on Central time. Because of this, as I travelled on Saturday, the light on the farm fields was amazing.

I left at 8 so the sun was up but at that perfect angle that makes the photographer in me drool. As it is generally frowned upon to do digital SLR photography while driving, I had to be content with just enjoying the moments.

I had the new Ed Sheeran on the WiFi jack.  I love his music so much. This album is so personal and autobiographical my thoughts kept wandering to personal thoughts of my own.

 I was going to see a relative of my mom's who had old photos that she wanted help identifying.  I thought of my mom and dad, and the fact that the  anniversaries of their deaths are coming up. Dad's will be five years tomorrow. Mom's will be 3 years next week. I found parallels in the songs. Stories Ed Sheeran told that I wished I could do as succinctly played on the radio as the stories I wished I could tell played in my head.

I had to pass through Amish country to get to my destination. Passing buggies and people riding bikes with the sun bathing the fields in golden light made me think of my ancestors who settled in my hometown. German ancestors who rode in buggies and farmed fields by hand and hung laundry out to dry on lines are who I am from. I wondered if anyone else driving was in awe of the beauty all around. Do the Amish notice anymore since it is what they live every day?

As I drove, I thought about the fact that I was driving a vehicle and waiting for the part of the drive where I could go 65/70 miles an hour. A van that could comfortably hold 7 and that had heat.  I was listening to music I transferred from my google account to my phone that I then cast it to the WiFi jack, because the CD player is not working. All the while passing people who have no idea who Ed Sheeran is and have chosen a life that seems so much harder than the one the rest of have chosen.

The dichotomy really struck me.

Coming home, the sun was once again behind me and was starting to set all golden again. The relative had a portrait on the wall of my grandfather's family where he is between 12 and 15. I took photos of it. She had albums of my mom's side of the family that she gave me. There are photos of my grandfather as a young man before my grandmother or my mom. There are photos of family gatherings where everyone is in a big group. I had no idea there were photos of people at the beach or posing by the DANGER Railroad crossing sign in the 19teens and 20s.  I thought everything then was still formal and posed by professionals.  Every picture I see makes me want more. Is there someone somewhere who has a photo of my great-great grandparents? What about the other sides of the family? Where are those photos?

 I should be satisfied.  I know this. 5 years ago I had no idea the pictures I would now have. I am grateful.

Grateful but I want more connections. I want to see me in those faces. I want to see my children in the childhood faces of my ancestors. I want to know their stories. Are any of them the same as my story?

Grandpa is between his mom and dad -- the youngest in the family --born in 1897.  What stories could he tell if he were alive today?

I looked it up and the Amish do not believe in posing for photos. Perhaps the connection they have to the past through community is enough to satiate the need for knowledge of what came before.

I want more.

It's amazing what a little music, while driving through Amish country bathed in golden light, can bring to mind.

Unexpected

"Hi. I just inherited a box of photos from my great aunt and I saw that you had an individual on your tree that matches the family and I was wondering if you are connected and interested."

This is the gist of an e-mail I read on the way home from running errands with my husband.

My head exploded with excitement! If we had been driving a team of horses I might have snapped the reigns.

This person is a member of Ancestry and saw on my Ancestry tree that we had the same relative in common. A relative who moved from my hometown to the Kansas prairie and started a family. He mentioned he had photos from Kansas as well as my home town. The possibilities running through my head were endless but the dream I mentioned out loud to my husband was the possibility that it was of my great aunt's wedding and that it might include a photo of the family altogether so I could see what my relatives looked like.

I told him my connection and he agreed to e-mail me photos.

Later that afternoon I received a few from Kansas.  And that night he sent me twelve from my home town. And you know what? There was a photo of a couple with the woman in a wedding dress!

Freak out!

I opened my family tree and got to that branch of the family to try to match faces to how old they would be approximately. Going on the assumption that the couple were my great aunt and her new husband I figured out who would be married and therefore with a spouse, who would have had kids by then and how old they would be, and who else might be there and photographed considering it would have been 1889. Some things were a bit off but others meshed. The crazy thing was the woman in the photo did not look like the one in a photo from Kansas several years later. Some of the kids with parents didn't look old enough. And my great- grandparents who had married two years earlier were no where to be seen.

So I allowed myself to go down the "what if" road.

What if the wedding couple was actually MY great- grandparents? Things fall into place if this is the case. If the wedding couple is my great- grandparents then I have all of my great- grandmothers siblings and their families if they were old enough at the time. And a photo of my great-great grandmother who would have been about 53 in 1887.

Some people that were photographed are unknown to me. More detective work is needed. But the scenario in my head is this:  My great grandmother's family was rather poor. My great-grandfather's family were fairly prosperous.  Maybe his family paid for the photos. Then, when younger sis married and moved to Kansas she took the photos of her family with her, since heading to Kansas with her Lutheran preacher husband meant it was unlikely they'd be back anytime soon.

This is the story in my head. The story I want to be true. But that makes it hard to make an unbiased opinion on the photos taken 30 years apart that I am comparing to decide if they are mine.

Does she look 50ish?

Do these people

Look like 2nd woman from left and 4th man

How amazing is it if these are actually my great grandparents in 1887?


And that leads to the next question.
The next quest.
The next obsession.

If the photos sent to me represent the great grandma side, and
it actually was my great- grandfather's side that paid for the photos, where are the great grandpa side of the family photos?  Because both of my great-great grandparents on that side would have been alive at that time.

And Oh how I'd love to see them!

Woefully behind

I had good intentions of writing every day what I am thankful for, but exhaustion and life have gotten in the way.

I can't promise the next days won't be the same. So some things I am grateful for on a regular basis:

Mondays youngest has newspaper after school so I stay after at my school and visit with one of my best friends. Her kids are in another district now and involved in their own activities so this is one of the only opportunities I have to talk with her face to face. It is a wonderful time to share frustrations and to laugh. She is one of my only confidants and I value the 45 minutes I get to spend nearly every Monday.

Said oldest son empties the dishwasher every morning. This makes the mornings so much smoother and I don't feel like I am the hired help. It has taken a huge amount of stress out of the mornings because I am not the only one working to get us out the door. For those with younger kids, it does get easier. I am grateful for that.

Husband is done with soccer now and is home on Fridays again. After the week apart, my very most favorite moment of the entire week is that moment when we are in bed and he spoons me. I feel so safe and cared for and knowing he is there to help with life again allows me to relax and breathe. That singular moment is what I am grateful for every weekend.

I have friends who have been married about the same amount of time that hubby and I have whose marriages are ending. Not for abuse or anything horrible -- they have just grown apart. I can't imagine starting over at nearly 50 by choice. I am so grateful for my hubby and the effort and work we both put into this marriage. He is the best thing that ever happened to me. Because of him we have two amazing boys. Because of him, things in his work world and concentric circles outward have changed for the better. He is a good man and I am grateful for him every single day.

We got to spend 3 hours with my sisters and their families yesterday. We are spread out in age and personalities and after losing our parents we could have drifted apart. We don't talk often. We don't get together often. But yesterday was wonderful and I am grateful we have each other.

And as a bonus, I am grateful they have finally come to appreciate the importance of the photograph. Memories can be captured by the heart but photographic evidence is wonderful.

And lastly for today, we got an email today that we don't have subs for tomorrow so I will be filling in tomorrow. I have to cancel reading groups for my K's and 2nd graders which disappoints me, but at least I have a heads up. Usually it is a last minute scramble. So I am grateful for early warnings of schedule changes.

Hopefully I can find more to be thankful for tomorrow despite the change.

Thankful Day one

Growing up in northern Indiana, Autumn is the best of all seasons. The warm days and cool evenings lead to spectacular leaf colors. The angle of the sun is warm and inviting. Growing up in the 70's  leaf burning was allowed and in the country now, it still is. I love the smell of burning leaves so much, I would buy a candle with a "burning leaf" scent if it existed and they could capture it exactly. Being able to wear a T-shirt during the day but needing a sweatshirt at night is a beautiful bonus to Autumn's attributes.

If it were possible to hug a day, today was a day to bear hug. 

Younger son and I went for a walk after school down our country roads and as we walked the overwhelming thought in my head was, "What a gift!" 

Warm air stirred by strong breezes wafted leaves from the trees to shower the road as we walked. I love to take photos and as I listened to  my son talk about his day at school and what homework he had for the night, I kept wishing I had my camera with me to capture the angle of branches on the trees that were now uncovered from their summer layers. You normally think of "dappled" pertaining to the patches of light and dark on the ground, but the angle of the sun made the orange practically sparkle -- if it's possible for orange to sparkle. The sky was pale blue and made the perfect background for the colors of the leaves. I asked my son to take a picture of one tree in particular, that was stunning, with his phone since I didn't even have that with me. 

After we got home, my wonderful 17 year old son even agreed to humor me by collecting some leaves from the yard and tossing them in the air so I could get a picture of falling leaves. 

I wish there was a way to bottle days like this, but I guess if they were common we wouldn't appreciate them as much. 

For the beauty of the day and the gift of a teenage son I adore, I am truly thankful.