Old Pictures, Bittersweet

Relatives I hardly knew, people I can't name, houses I wish I'd lived in, wars that surely shaped my fathers' personality. I'm putting my parents photo albums on disk. My grandaughter Shay was here for a week , taking pictures of each old photo, with me uploading them to my computer, editing them, looking into faces I can barely remember. My mom & dad on the beach at Stony Point; my sister and I, my dad as a high school soccer player, my parents at her parents house, smoking cigarettes in front of the fireplace.

My sister and I rarely smiled; perhaps we knew what was coming.

Both my parents have passed, dad in 1966, mom in 2006. So we'll never find out more than the cryptic statements near the pictures: Seneca Falls, 1937, Niagara Falls, Lake Lucille. Winters in deep snow (it was New York) and summers in backyard blow-up swimming pools, and, like clockwork, the posed pictures of Easter Sunday, and every Sunday "ready for church."

We hung out with bunches of neighbor kids, dressed in Cowboy and Indian suits, building forts for plastic army men, carving acorns into doll dishes. It was actually a pretty idyllic childhood, there was a brook to explore, dams to build, frogs to catch and release. The outdoors was a wonderful place to play. Indoors was another story.

I'll post more pictures as I work on this project.