Photos, Continued

I spent the morning going through, and trying to organize, the rest of the printed photos rescued from both my parent’s houses and dad’s darkroom. I confess to tossing a couple of hundred of people/places I don’t know and have zero way, now, of finding out about. Also on the cutting room floor went many duplicates, and picture I simply don’t want/need. This left at least a robust 1000+ to further sort.

I ended up with various categories:

• I added to my mom’s family stack (many 100’s), but did not organize them like I did a year ago. It was a delight to see more of my mom from the time she was brand new until her mid-20’s. I was once again thankful for her mother’s pencil notations on the back of the vast majority of pictures.
• The next delight was to see so many photos of mom from her late-20’s, when I was brand new, through her years on the Island before my father became ill. It was like an intensive therapy session in seeing my mama (and my dad) well and whole. It helped.
• Then there were all the photos I’d sent her when my kids were little, during my first marriage.
• And pics of holidays over the last 2+ decades that my DH and I have been a unit.

The organization of these photos was atrocious. If a sleeve of pictures had any notation as to its contents, there were all sorts of other, off topic, pictures in the sleeve as well. And heaven forfend anyone, other than my grandmother, actually jot a note on the back of a picture, or a date. As the recently deputized family historian, I find this very frustrating, though I am, of course, able to get fairly close to actual dates. And then there are the negatives (not the ones rescued from the darkroom, but ones that came back from developing)… Thankfully in their protective sleeves, but not with their pictures. Handfuls. Sigh. I think this might by my mom’s penance for me for blowing off algebra in high school 😂.

I am sad to have so few of my dad’s childhood and family photos, but there’s another desk to look in…

Well, it’ll be an exercise in control, somehow. And at the conclusion of the exercise, there will be many elegant photo books. Yes, old fashion, but the tactile satisfaction of looking at pictures that way is what I want to do. I’ll also scan everything for posterity.