Me at 3 years oldI have spent the last two weeks, off and on, going through boxes and boxes of old photos that I inherited when my mother died almost three years ago. My mother, rest her sweet and wonderful soul, took pictures of every milestone, every family reunion, every holiday, every vacation - sometimes in duplicate and triplicate. To her credit, she had organized many photos in albums, but there were still a lot of loose photos in boxes that needed attention. And, not only that, but there were dozens of framed photos throughout her home over the years that I simply have no room to hang on my walls. Plus, it would be a little creepy for me to hang a shrine of photos of ME all over the place!
I have been sorting through boxes and envelopes, pulling photos out of frames and some out of albums, and putting some aside for my niece and a few cousins....and I am still swimming in photos! It's been a rather bittersweet journey into the past, reminding me what a wonderful childhood I had and what lovely parents I had, but trying to decide what to keep and how best to organize what I keep has been very overwhelming. I know the best thing to do would be to scan and save everything to CDs, but just the thought of how much time and effort it would take to scan, transfer and label hundreds of photos (some dating back to the 1800s) makes me break out in a cold sweat!
So, when I feel the beginning of a panic attack coming on, I take a break and go look at my gardens. I have green tomatoes everywhere and cucumbers and squash taking off in full swing, which makes me very happy. But, what really makes my heart sing are the flowers. I take a deep breath, admire my flowers and all is right with the world again. Except now I have more dang photos of my own creation to deal with!
I have been sorting through boxes and envelopes, pulling photos out of frames and some out of albums, and putting some aside for my niece and a few cousins....and I am still swimming in photos! It's been a rather bittersweet journey into the past, reminding me what a wonderful childhood I had and what lovely parents I had, but trying to decide what to keep and how best to organize what I keep has been very overwhelming. I know the best thing to do would be to scan and save everything to CDs, but just the thought of how much time and effort it would take to scan, transfer and label hundreds of photos (some dating back to the 1800s) makes me break out in a cold sweat!
So, when I feel the beginning of a panic attack coming on, I take a break and go look at my gardens. I have green tomatoes everywhere and cucumbers and squash taking off in full swing, which makes me very happy. But, what really makes my heart sing are the flowers. I take a deep breath, admire my flowers and all is right with the world again. Except now I have more dang photos of my own creation to deal with!
6 comments:
i love going through old pictures - i always get excited when arnetta pulls out old photos - i like seeing jons family, hearing the stories and seeing how young everyone looked!! i have wished a thousand times that my family had such a wealth of photographs especially the great and great grandparent kind...
your flowers are beautiful, of course, and i agree - a person just can't contain a negative emotion while gazing at beautiful flowers or a lush garden!
Daune - you're welcome to come on out to Colorado and help me sort through photos. I'll even send you home with your very own stack to look at whenever you feel nostalgic!
Time to go out and gaze at the gardens...
Lilla,
Your flowers are so pretty! Sounds like you are going to have lots of vegetables before long. I'm afraid my flowers and my garden are past their prime. I've pulled up the cucumbers and squash, and the tomatoes are almost completely gone. Only thing I'm getting is green peppers.
Good luck on the photos.
How wonderful you have all those memories caught in photos! I can only imagine how sorting through all of them could cause your eye to twitch though. I wonder if there is a company that would scan all of them to disk for you a reasonable price? We took all my father's old movie films of the family(the ones that have no sound)to some place that put them all on video tape for us years ago. We need to transfer them to DVD now!
Your flowers are gorgeous! And it sounds like your garden is doing really well. We barely had a growing season this year. It started so late - and is already petering out. But I'm looking forward to enjoying pictures of yours!
That's a cute picture of you, by the way. You look so happy!
oops - forgot to click the button to email follow up comments! I got it now.....
SVB and Penny, thanks for the compliments on the flowers. Our veggie garden is growing so slowly that I'm afraid we'll never get to harvest much produce. It's very frustrating!
Penny, as for paying someone to put the photos on a CD, I'm afraid it would be very costly. I haven't looked into it yet, but just knowing how much time it would take makes me think I would have to pay a huge premium to have someone else do them. I may just have to start on a 5-year plan to do them myself!
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