The Great Photo Purge (Send Snacks)

Jenn McKinlay: Recently (last year, the year before, I have no idea), I listened to The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson. It is exactly what it sounds like, a book about cleaning out your possessions before you die so that the people you leave behind don't have to. 

My best friend is Swedish and we talked quite a bit about the book while I was listening to it. My friend confirmed that this is how most Swedes are - thoughtful about not leaving behind problems for others. I can vouch that this is true because she and I are the same height and weight and every time we visit, she gives me shoes or clothes because she's also 12 years older than me and in constant death clean mode. I'm okay with this because she has excellent taste and takes care of her things so it's a win win.

What I loved about Magnusson's book was that she made the death cleaning easy and straightforward and then you get to the final chapters and she talks about the one thing that makes even death cleaners stumble -- photographs. 

Well, I was determined not to falter. Armed with a trash bag, a shredder, and the misplaced confidence of someone who has watched exactly one episode of a home organization show, I opened our storage unit.

You know the one. The Indiana Jones warehouse of my past where between the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail were seventeen boxes labeled “PHOTOS—IMPORTANT!!!” (Apparently, I felt very strongly about that in 2009.)

Here’s the thing about old photos. You don’t simply “go through” them. You time travel. One minute you’re tossing duplicates, the next you’re misty over a blurry snapshot of a long-gone dog who, in that photo, is mid-zoomie and eternal.

I found hairstyles that should have come with warning labels. Seriously, I think my bangs in the 80's are solely responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Outfits that were clearly chosen during a period of temporary insanity, I mean, were shoulder pads that doubled as pillows really necessary? Entire vacations documented before smartphones, when I took 24 photos and 19 of them featured my thumb or a sunset that looked beige.

And yet.

There were the Hooligans dressed up as toilet paper mummies. The Hub's grandparents dancing at our wedding. Friends tailgating at the college game where the keg was featured but we're all there in our  day-glo highlighter hued clothing, holding red Solo cups.

I’ll confess: the shredder remained tragically underfed.

Yes, I mailed a decade of photos to an ex so he could remember what he looked like in the 90's. Yes, I let go of the mysterious landscapes that simply didn't translate their awesomeness to a faded 4 X 6 inch print. Yes, I bravely discarded photos of people I absolutely couldn't identify. Who are you, sir, and more importantly why are we hugging?

Still, knowing that my Hooligans (bless their hearts) are never going to care about the 20,000 photos that document their Dad's and my lifetimes, a solid dent was made. Many giant boxes have been distilled into several much smaller ones with their contents to be digitized at a future date. The rest? Well, progress is best measured by hefty bags and I have many to go before I sleep (nod to Robert Frost).

How about you, Reds and Readers, what do your photo archives look like?

It's a Grandmother!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Congratulate me, everyone, I’m a grandmother! Little Paulie* arrived last week, a full ten days before his due date, throwing us all into confusion. He must get this from my daughter-in-law’s side of the family, because I guarantee you no one on the Hugo-Vidal camp has ever arrived that early to anything.

*He looks just like Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas

 Right now, my grandmotherly duties are keeping the new parent’s two dogs, which, if you’re keeping score at home, makes for four dogs and two cats, one of which is my younger daughter’s $15,000 guy. It feels as if my house had been invaded by needy toddlers, which, I suppose, is a good preview of the future.

 

Like this, but bald, no cigar, and in a onesie

I’m excited about this new stage in my life, in part because my own grandmothers played such an important role in my life. I was lucky to have three: Grandmother Spencer, a loving fluffy bisquit of a Southern woman, Grandma Fleming, who magically always had fresh-baked cookies when I stopped at her house on my way home from high school, and Grandma Greuling, a no-nonsense Adirondacker who let me help in her antique shop and told me stories about my family going back to the 1600s. 

 

None of my grandmothers took me on vacations or showered me with expensive gifts. They let me be with them while they sewed, gardened, baked, refinished furniture. They loved me for who I was and listened to me no matter what. What a gift for any child!

 

Reds, what do you remember about your own grandmothers?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: I remember my grandmother was very old and wrinkly and spoke very little English and with a thick accent. She always had a coin or two in her pocket for me. 

 

She lived in an apartment nearby and came to our house once a week and cooked. She made the world’s best thin, crisp cinnamon cookies which I’ve never been able to duplicate. I got to cut them out and brush them with butter and sprinkle on cinnamon.

She also made the world’s best chopped liver. Don’t groan, it’s delicious. She’d start by rendering chicken fat from chicken skin (I stood by the stove hoping to grab off some of the crispy bits). And end by chopping  sauteed livers and onions that had been cooked in the chicken fat, seasoning with plenty of salt and pepper, and chopping in a massive wooden bowl which I still have, it’s bottom cross-hatched with cut marks.

I never got a chance to ask her what life had been like in Russia, how she and others in her family managed to flee, what it was like to go through Ellis Island….

If you have a living grandparent, ASK while you can still get answers!

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  My father’s mother was elegant and gorgeous, beautiful with icy white hair and the best clothes, and a wonderful cook who made lemon pancakes in the shape of our initials and dusted with powdered sugar. She made amazing chicken soup, and kreplach, and matzo ball soup, and a wine cake that no one could ever duplicate–and she had written out  recipe cards with NO quantities, so no one could possibly  make her dishes again. She gave me a typewriter, when I was about 9, which was so life changing. (It came in a little suitcase.)

I did ask her about leaving Russia, and she started talking about what a lovely village her family had lived in and what lovely soldiers came to town, and I soon realized she was about to tell me her own fairy tale, and I’d never know the real story. I did ask her to write it down--she typed it on my typewriter! And it is still somewhere.

My mother's mother was very..quirky. Ethereal, and fragile. From another time, it really felt. I have no memory of her ever saying a word to me. 

 

When my parents were divorced, I also had my step-father’s mother. She once said to me, when I was 10, maybe: “I love you as much as I would love a real grandchild.”

 

 

 

LUCY BURDETTE: My mother’s mother was Lucille Burdette–she was a painter, very kind and gentle. Sadly, she died when I was about seven so I don’t have lots of memories. 

 

My father’s mother was little and fierce–we still tell stories about how she bossed my grandfather around. My mother was afraid of her, and my uncle didn’t have too much good to say either. Even so, I admired her sturdy toughness and John fears I’ve inherited too much of her:). 

 

I feel like grandmothers of today seem much younger and more active. Congratulations Julia!

 

RHYS BOWEN:  Congratulations from me too, Julia. You’ll love this stage of life.

 

My mother’s mother raised me while my mother worked (female teachers were required during the war), then came to live with us when my grandfather died, so she was always a huge part of my life. She was tiny and gentle. I don’t ever remember her raising her voice. She showed endless patience and kindness to me, which was great because my mother was always overworked and stressed and had no time for me. She lived to 91 and ate like a sparrow. 

 

I didn’t know my father’s mother as well. We went to visit her frequently but it was always a formal visit, not playing with her as with my other grandmother. But she was a wonderful cook. I remember her sausage pie with her homemade red cabbage pickles. Still drooling! And when she died, when I had just got engaged, she left me her wedding ring, which I had melted into my own ring.

 

I am blessed to have been part of my grandchildren’s lives since the day they were born. When they were little II had to make up fantastic stories for them. Also  chased them over climbing equipment, Such happy memories.

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I only knew one grandmother, Lillian, known as Nanny, my mother’s mother. A widowed school teacher (I knew neither of my grandfathers) she came to live with us when I was born. We shared a room until I was about six, when my parents built an addition on to the house for her so that she could have her own space. She was the gentlest person I’ve ever known, although she must have been really tough to have raised four kids mostly on her own during the Depression. She was unfailingly kind and encouraging to me and a good buffer between me and my mother, who was a much more demanding personality. She taught me to read and to be interested in the world and we had many adventures together. She died at 86 and I still miss her.

 

 

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What are your memories of a grandmother - or grandfather? 

 

Trying to Stay Calm!

RHYS BOWEN:  In case you haven't noticed, there is an election on Tuesday. I've been trying to stay away from watching the news because I find it too stressful. Too much hate and division being spewed in what should be a civilized process of letting the American people have their say.  On Tuesday, we hope, they will have their say and get the country they deserve. 

But until then I'm trying to stay calm. I’m no good at meditating. Tried it. Doesn’t work. I have the CALM app. I sit in a comfortable position, eyes closed, palms turned upward and let my mind empty of all thoughts. Breathe in.  Breathe out. Breathe in... wait. Did I send off that blog piece I promised today? Beathe out... insurance. Insurance on the Phoenix house is due.... Breathe in... picture yourself floating on a cloud... floating... wait, do clouds feel wet when you lie on them? 

You get the message. I cannot switch off my thoughts.

So... I’m going to send you pictures of places of calm.  One of the great things about having all my photos on my phone is that I can escape to a place so easily. I’m waiting in the dentist’s office and suddenly I am hiking toward the Matterhorn. I am standing on a bridge in Venice or I am back at our last vacation in Cassis. Other things that make me feel happy are revisiting family gatherings.

What do you use to invoke calm? 

And Karen in Ohio, Diana Chambers chose you for a giveaway of her book on Julia Child. Please email me with your home address.

On awkwardness

JAN: I was going to write this long essay on Good Friday and how I like the solemn feeling it provokes.

But the heck with that.

Instead, I've decided to share my latest giggle. A friend told me about this website and every day, I go to it first thing in the morning.

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com

Every morning I laugh. And not in a mean way, really. I'm not LAUGHING at these people, I'm not. I find it somehow endearing at how earnest, hopeful, and out right trying-too-hard they all are. But not just them, all of us. These remind me of all the home movies my father used to take (but thankfully, long before the Internet could reveal them.)

I will always prefer awkwardness over sophistication. And I love the way the photos capture a period of time -- okay usually at its worst. But the big hair of the eighties, the short shorts on guys in the 70s, it's just so much fun.

The captions are terrific and there's only one new photo a day, so it doesn't take much time.

So let's celebrate awkwardness!!! And Happy Easter everyone!!

Photo credit: Roberto Mattioli.