Another Life

The other day I was looking for some pictures. I have noticed in all of the pictures that I have scanned from my childhood that there are some pictures that I remember, gone. I don’t know where they are. I have missed them for years. Today with all of my pictures digital I yearn for some of those pictures that I can’t find.

Guess what. I found them. No, I didn’t find them. They found me. I came home from an evening event and there were 3 scrapbooks on the porch. I asked Jimmy where they had come from and he said that a box fell out of the “attic” out in the barn. This is stuff that I moved out here with me when I married Jimmy. We always talked about him pulling it all down so I could go through it and get rid of the things that didn’t matter anymore. But we have never gone through it. A couple of years ago John climbed up in the attic and brought some boxes down. Most of the stuff was ruined. I did keep a few things but most of it I went through and had a huge bonfire. There were things I had saved my entire life that I chose to say goodbye to. But there were other things that I boxed again and put in a safe place that I could have access to.

So, back to those scrapbooks. They were journals and pictures and other scrapbook items. They were intact but you could tell where the mice had nibbled on the edges. I made up my mind to take them to the office and go through them. I skimmed through the small one and realized that it was a scrapbook from my time in Sweden. There was a journal and pictures. It took everything within me not to go through the scrapbook right then and there. But it was late and I had a plan.

When I got to the office I took them in and tried to clean them up. I quickly came to realize that I needed to digitize these and then put them away. But I wasn’t going to take time during the day to do it. I would work late and/or the weekend. I did make sure that I could turn to every page and that none of the pictures were sticking to each other. Actually, the pictures were in really good shape. But I wasn’t going to be able to peel them out of the scrapbooks. I made up my mind to cut each page out of the scrapbook, digitize it, and then put them in one of my memory boxes. I know, TMI.

So, I went to the office today and told myself I could only work until noon. I began to cut the pages out of the biggest scrapbook because it had those long lost pictures. I wanted to preserve those. And so I have those. I’ll be sharing some of them here for you. I’ll try to tell you the stories as I go along as well. I hope you enjoy them as much as I will by sharing them.