Stored memories retrieved


Photo Memories
Originally uploaded by Big Dadoo

I’m taking some time off between Christmas and New Years so I’m spending some time around the house relaxing and getting some things done like replacing the interior doors and cleaning and organizing some areas of the house. Today was a cleaning and organizing day.

We have a storage room, which frequently turns into a dumping ground for all that stuff you want to keep, but just don’t want to take the time to store properly, with some sort of hope of knowing where it is when you want to get it back. The other storage area is under the stairs, the place where memories are stored.

OK, my memories are not really stored under the stairs, I haven’t totally lost it yet, but it is the place where we store some of the things that trigger powerful memories. You see, under the stairs there are several large boxes. These boxes contain photo albums. Not my photo albums, that’s another organizational story for another day, but the albums from my parents and grandparents. What will the digital generation do when it’s their turn to look through the “family album”? No technology problems here. Pictures from the ’20s and possibly older are ready to view at the flip of a page, and so many that I’d never seen before. Each picture a treasure and thankfully my Ama and Mom labeled and dated many of the photos so distant relatives, places and occasions can be identified. Photos of my Dad in England during the war, riding a motorcycle. I’d only heard a brief story of his encounter with a large pot hole which resulted in the end of his motorcycle riding career.

One album has wedding pictures of all my mom’s brother and sisters, the births of cousins, and growing up photos. So many of these photos trigger wonderful memories. There was also a sequence of photos when my Ama and Granddad moved into a new house on Oak St. I spend many wonderful hours in that house and it was fun to see it when it was new. And that was in just a couple of the dozens of albums not to mention a lot of un-filed photos in a box.

I think I may start to build a real photo album soon.

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