Personal Family Stuff
I was looking for a particular letter in one of my mother's photo albums, which meant I had to go looking through a half dozen before I found the one I was looking for. Going through photos of my family during the 60s and 70s particularly a family portrait that must've been taken in 1972. 
Who are these people??? I hardly recognize them -- my brother looking handsome and still innocent of so many things he experienced later in life... my sister looking very unhappy and in some pictures as if she were mentally cursing the photographer... her expression of hostility is really creepy to me now, looking at this picture some 40 years later. I don't recognize either my brother or sister in this picture. They stand behind where I -- about 10 years old at the time -- sit between my mom and dad, and we three seem to be the only ones really smiling. There were (and are) secrets in my family that I never learned. I miss Mom and Dad more than I can say, but I will never understand what happened with my brother and sister. Our family was apparently messed up in ways I still don't even understand... but I miss having a family. Any family at all. I mourn our loss of each other; I really do.
I was in a thrift store the other day and I noticed a box on the counter with old photographs for sale. They were someone else's grandparent's college photos. Someone whose kids didn't want or couldn't keep them. How sad is that? As much as I'm tired of moving these old albums across the country every time I move, I can't bring myself to give them up yet. I've thought about sending them to my brother, but what if he doesn't want them? Will he toss them in the trash? Will they wind up in a thrift store like those I saw? If I don't ever send them off, though, what will become of them? I have no progeny, so all I can do is pass them horizontally. I have no idea what has become of my brother's kids; I don't even know where my sister is or if she ever had children. What will happen to our family photos when I'm gone?
Ye gods this is making me sad.
In other news, I also dug up my senior honors thesis on "Narcissism and Doubling in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations," which I defended some 25 years ago this month I guess. I can't tell you how odd I find this -- on so many levels. I just finished teaching this novel for the first time ever and will be grading student essays in a few days. What possessed me to think that narcissism and doubling were worthy topics of research? What possessed the Undergraduate Honors program to award me a hefty scholarship for that thesis? It now seems such a pedantic exercise in pseudo-intellectual scholarship.
Wow, I need to grab a good book and read myself to sleep. Nostalgia is bad for my mental health.
Who are these people??? I hardly recognize them -- my brother looking handsome and still innocent of so many things he experienced later in life... my sister looking very unhappy and in some pictures as if she were mentally cursing the photographer... her expression of hostility is really creepy to me now, looking at this picture some 40 years later. I don't recognize either my brother or sister in this picture. They stand behind where I -- about 10 years old at the time -- sit between my mom and dad, and we three seem to be the only ones really smiling. There were (and are) secrets in my family that I never learned. I miss Mom and Dad more than I can say, but I will never understand what happened with my brother and sister. Our family was apparently messed up in ways I still don't even understand... but I miss having a family. Any family at all. I mourn our loss of each other; I really do.
I was in a thrift store the other day and I noticed a box on the counter with old photographs for sale. They were someone else's grandparent's college photos. Someone whose kids didn't want or couldn't keep them. How sad is that? As much as I'm tired of moving these old albums across the country every time I move, I can't bring myself to give them up yet. I've thought about sending them to my brother, but what if he doesn't want them? Will he toss them in the trash? Will they wind up in a thrift store like those I saw? If I don't ever send them off, though, what will become of them? I have no progeny, so all I can do is pass them horizontally. I have no idea what has become of my brother's kids; I don't even know where my sister is or if she ever had children. What will happen to our family photos when I'm gone?
Ye gods this is making me sad.
In other news, I also dug up my senior honors thesis on "Narcissism and Doubling in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations," which I defended some 25 years ago this month I guess. I can't tell you how odd I find this -- on so many levels. I just finished teaching this novel for the first time ever and will be grading student essays in a few days. What possessed me to think that narcissism and doubling were worthy topics of research? What possessed the Undergraduate Honors program to award me a hefty scholarship for that thesis? It now seems such a pedantic exercise in pseudo-intellectual scholarship.
Wow, I need to grab a good book and read myself to sleep. Nostalgia is bad for my mental health.