Blog 14: Messy Draft (with classmate's comments)
It was like I was time traveling. I felt as if I entered the twilight zone. I was not prepared for this. It was only supposed to be Spring cleaning.
I was cleaning my room one night, rummaging through my closet and I stumbled upon this old red suitcase. Slowly I drag it out of my closet and blow off all the dust. I unzip the suitcase and am shocked to see a cardboard box filled with black and white photos.
“How long as this been in my closet?” I whisper to myself.
I sat their breathless, with a handful of photos, peering through them as if I too was traveling back in time. My mind was a cocktail of confusion fused with excitement and spiked with fear. My mind was filled with nervousness and caution as I viewed these photos for the first time in my life. (Careful not to rip the fragile tearing tips.)
These were pictures of my family over fifty years ago. These were pictures of my grandmother and grandfather when they were only twenty years old. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous my grandmother was. She had a slender figure with curves in the right places. She had the beehive hairdo, the and those black framed cat eye glasses. She wore a tight mini dress, and had bell bottoms and a hippie looking yellow shirt on in another picture. In another black and white photo, I saw my grandfather? Was it my grandfather? It must have been my grandfather. He was lying on his belly at the beach, facing the camera as if he was a model. (My goodness my grandparents were a gorgeous couple.)I was taken back for a moment. I wondered what kind of life they lived. I know it’s crazy now, my grandmother lives with me and my grandfather lives in his farm in the Philippines. Technically they are married, but I for years they’ve lived in different countries.
As I flipped through the pages of the old album, I stop and smile at a picture of my grandmother’s sister and her husband. My auntie Ellen, God knows I miss her. She must have been twenty years old in the photo. Her and her husband, may have just been dating in the picture. There are no children in the picture. No signs of children at all. As I stare at their picture, I think about how I miss the family so much.
My Auntie Ellen,-he was my grandmother’s sister. She died from cancer when I was still in middle school. I didn’t see her very often, she lived in Michigan with her husband and family. She had this contagious laughter and amazing sense of humor. The last time I saw her, I was at my Uncle Roland’s funeral. He was died in a car accident. I remember standing in the cemetery during my uncle’s funeral crying, crying in the snow.
Posted in: on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 at at 11:08 AM
i like this essay. i could actually see you doing this because your despcriptions are great! i see that your family has a meaning in your life and you tell that in your story. just from looking at a story you can see where you came from. maybe the features you have from your grandparents? Interesting cant wait to read it
Pictures can be so mysterious. Especially of our parents when they were our age. You might have fun speculate what they were like, what they've experienced, and what they've attained since then. I love the crying in the snow part.
Hey, so. I love it how we always find old stuff in our closet. I think thats why I don't exactly clean my closet out frequently. I want to be nostalgically surprised one day.
In anycase, you mentioned that your grandmother, and perhaps a couple of others, are the only ones left, you could maybe do something about how life is fleeting. People spend only a certain amount of time on earth, but its the photos, the stories, and other things like that that immortalize them (at least for your generation and the next). then you could put that into how you would want to be immortalized? i dont know if that makes sense. :)
Oh god, I hear you - going through my grandparent's photos can make me cry! knowing how the stories panned out for the happy young people in the pictures is so beautiful and painful...
I'm not sure where you may go with this - it sounds like you're already started, lady :)
ooh ooh - headstones. This just came to me. You mention people passing away. These (as Jose touched on) are memorials that matter to people. These are the stories you end up telling, not a neat funeral package.
Additional random thought. I don't know your religious background, but in Judaism, there's a lovely tradition of yahrtzeit candles which are lit every year on the death date of the relative. My friends use plain white candles - I don't know how standard the color or design is, but its such a pretty simple way.
I was raised "American" Roman Catholic, and there were occasional candles, but never for death dates - if you do have a religio-cultural tradition about memorializing that you are into, stick that in there, by all means.
Any cool ways you have personally or family-wise you have to confront the past? Anything you do on anniversaries, day-to-day? (like, whenever I misplace something, I grumble aloud at my mom)
That's about all I have for now - i'd like to see you just go from here and see what pops out :)