Photographs and memories – a Jim Croce song that was popular in the mid-1970s – could be the soundtrack for this past weekend. The song’s lyrics don’t exactly fit, that song is about a lost love, but the sentiment of being left with photographs of times gone by is right on point.
Once again, I spent hours sorting through family photographs. This time from my mother’s place in Florida. Two years ago, we cleaned out my in-laws’ home to prepare to sell it. I took boxes of photographs to sort out – I wrote about that experience here.
This past weekend, I received a new set of boxes filled with photos, memorabilia, my mother’s paintings and other decorative items. These items made up her home in Boynton Beach, a home in the process of being sold. A great deal of the work of sorting was already done by my brother and sister-in-law, Mark and Pam, who spent a week going through Mom’s stuff – making multiple trips to Goodwill, wearing out a path to the trash dumpsters across the street, shipping boxes of books and photos, and finally packing their SUV to the brim with the rest to drive north.
Even with all the donations and distribution of many items, we are still left with the question: What do I do with all of the photographs? I find it very difficult to throw them away. I know they can be digitized and, in fact, I have done some of that. But what should we transfer? How should we organize it? If we take the time and effort to convert photos, will anyone look at them? What is the point of photos?
I like to pull out albums from time to time. I go back through a vacation remembering the sights and funny anecdotes, or on the birthday of one of my children, I’ll take out an album from when they were an infant and walk down memory lane.
Walking down memory lane has its pitfalls. In some ways it was easier to do this task with the Bakst family photos – less baggage for me. The pictures I was going through this past weekend ran the gamut from when my mom was a little girl in the 1930s to family weddings through the decades to our more recent trip to Israel.
I find myself looking at the pictures as if they will provide answers. Who was Nana (my maternal grandmother)? She has been gone fifty years. She was such a central figure in my childhood and in my understanding of family. I see pictures of her with Zada, my grandfather, and try to intuit their relationship. It is fruitless. The pictures don’t bring her back. If I linger too long, I just get sad.
I came across photos of our time in Illinois where we spent three summers while my dad went to school at the university to get his master’s in economics. We were great friends with another family, the Emrichs from Delaware. I see our smiling faces, there were seven of us kids, as we sit in the grass at the side of the community pool that we went to every day – weather permitting. I can hear Sweet Caroline and In the Year 2525 playing over the loudspeakers as we splashed each other. I look at myself and wonder: why did I think I was so fat and ugly – even then, at 7 years old? Now I see a cute little girl. I’ve wasted so much time dwelling in that negative place.
So many people in the pictures are gone. Finding images of my dad holding his grandchildren as newborns, when they are now in their thirties, some even approaching 40!, knowing he has been gone for 16 years brings warm memories and the ache of missing him.
It reminds me how much he reveled in being a grandfather. He had six that he doted on.
The realization that Gary and I are on the precipice of being the oldest generation is mind-blowing. There are so few elders left and those that are still with us face serious health threats. I am grateful that they are here. The shape and nature of our family has changed and continues to evolve. It is the cycle of life, and I cannot control it, try as I might.
I think it is time to put the photos aside and look forward. It is fine to take a trip down memory lane, but I can’t live there. I need to focus on my family as it is today. I want to shed the negative self-image and create a healthier one; one that I can walk in more comfortably for the rest of my life. That is a more fruitful assignment. Good luck to me.
Stories I Tell Myself 
Linda, you can’t imagine how your piece hit home with me. I am in the process of creating a workshop in our spare room. I hope to have it organized eventually to take on the same arduous task you have: organizing the photos from three generations. Not easy, when with every opened container I fall down the rabbit hole of remembrance. I am fully aware that my kids have no interest in inheriting my bulky, old adhesive-page albums reliving the days when anything they did for the first time warranted photo documentation. I have found taking IPhone shots of those old pictures and sending them to the subjects brings us both great pleasure.
I loved the picture of the cousins.
Your comments about body image made me think of the phrase, I wish I was as fat as the first time I thought I was fat. Really hoping this generation of young women grows up with a healthier vision of how they look.
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I had not heard that saying – so very appropriate. And, I share your hope for the future.
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There is so much I could comment on but the line that hit me the hardest was a simple one: “Who was Nana?” After all you have written about her, about spending your afternoons at Nana’s table, at first glance it seems odd to ask that question.
But, looking a bit deeper, it seems entirely natural to me. When we lose those people in those photographs, we struggle to hold on to them. But they are not there and photos don’t speak for them.
I personally struggle to keep hearing the voices of those people so that they don’t slip from my fingers and become mere photos. It is a losing struggle I suspect and yet one I feel compelled to engage in.
Here’s to the voice you give to those in the photographs. Thank you.
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