Sorting buried treasures
I have to put these away, and I've promised that they will be organized and stored in the space waiting for them. It's been a lift to my spirits to come in and sit down and see them spread around me. But I have to get back to business, sadly.
This one is very sweet, Geoff not quite three giving a kiss to his new baby sister Carole. It softens my heart every time I come in and sit down and see it. It was one that hadn't seen the light of day for a while.
My column for the Nauvoo Times this week is about this whole experience of gathering photos. It's called A Book of Remembering and you can read it here.
The two pictures with my Grandmother Jeppson that are mentioned in it are here:
and here:
sitting out in the garden at Aunt Elizabeth's at our reception.
When I was in college, I used to write letters. Back in the day, we wrote letters on special paper called stationery, made to be pretty, and sent them off in envelopes with stamps. Sitting down to write them was often an avoidance of schoolwork (for me), and they weren't usually a quick dash, but long and pondered over once I got started. Letters home, and letters sometimes also to my Grandmother Jeppson. I was now away from home, and connections were more poignant. I was paying more attention to lots of things.
She came to Salt Lake City from Walnut Creek (CA, Oakland area) once each year to visit her sister Ellen. I would go out to see her then, because time with her was rare and precious. When Hubby and I lived in San Francisco later for four months we would go out to spend the rest of the day with her every fast Sunday, because then our meetings were done at midday.
We didn't have a huge, constant correspondence, but she did answer. Anyone who has gone off to school in the days before the internet will appreciate how much it mattered to get mail. Long distance phone calls were expensive relative to other things, and not considered an ordinary entitlement, so real mail was a big deal.
I kept those letters, at least for a while. At some point among our various moves I sorted and jettisoned lots of things. I know that in clearing out our house last spring, I came upon some from my other grandparents and kept them still, just a few, just to have some tangible piece of them. I hope I have at least one note or card in my grandmother's hand, I think I do. I also still have an apron she sent as her last Christmas gift to me. (It survives because it was too pretty to use.)
I remember two bits from her letters to me that freshman year. One said, "Spring is late this year." It was the end of February and I looked out my window in the Rockies at the snow, and thought, "huh?" I knew she lived in California, and it was a whole different world, but it wasn't March yet--how could anything be blooming, and how could you have been expecting it even sooner?
The other was, "Age doesn't matter if he's special, does it?" It turned out that it didn't matter if this fellow I was dating was a senior in law school and I was a first year, greenie freshman. That did in fact turn into something that now has a full forty years history from the day of that picture above. I had trepidations, she had wisdom. She didn't hit the panic button at my tentative suggestion that thisnews.
That's what grandmothers should be, a source of serenity and loving. I had good ones on all sides.
My column for the Nauvoo Times this week is about this whole experience of gathering photos. It's called A Book of Remembering and you can read it here.
The two pictures with my Grandmother Jeppson that are mentioned in it are here:
When I was in college, I used to write letters. Back in the day, we wrote letters on special paper called stationery, made to be pretty, and sent them off in envelopes with stamps. Sitting down to write them was often an avoidance of schoolwork (for me), and they weren't usually a quick dash, but long and pondered over once I got started. Letters home, and letters sometimes also to my Grandmother Jeppson. I was now away from home, and connections were more poignant. I was paying more attention to lots of things.
She came to Salt Lake City from Walnut Creek (CA, Oakland area) once each year to visit her sister Ellen. I would go out to see her then, because time with her was rare and precious. When Hubby and I lived in San Francisco later for four months we would go out to spend the rest of the day with her every fast Sunday, because then our meetings were done at midday.
We didn't have a huge, constant correspondence, but she did answer. Anyone who has gone off to school in the days before the internet will appreciate how much it mattered to get mail. Long distance phone calls were expensive relative to other things, and not considered an ordinary entitlement, so real mail was a big deal.
I kept those letters, at least for a while. At some point among our various moves I sorted and jettisoned lots of things. I know that in clearing out our house last spring, I came upon some from my other grandparents and kept them still, just a few, just to have some tangible piece of them. I hope I have at least one note or card in my grandmother's hand, I think I do. I also still have an apron she sent as her last Christmas gift to me. (It survives because it was too pretty to use.)
I remember two bits from her letters to me that freshman year. One said, "Spring is late this year." It was the end of February and I looked out my window in the Rockies at the snow, and thought, "huh?" I knew she lived in California, and it was a whole different world, but it wasn't March yet--how could anything be blooming, and how could you have been expecting it even sooner?
The other was, "Age doesn't matter if he's special, does it?" It turned out that it didn't matter if this fellow I was dating was a senior in law school and I was a first year, greenie freshman. That did in fact turn into something that now has a full forty years history from the day of that picture above. I had trepidations, she had wisdom. She didn't hit the panic button at my tentative suggestion that thisnews.
That's what grandmothers should be, a source of serenity and loving. I had good ones on all sides.
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