BOX OF LIGHT

Today has been a mess. I have so much to do that instead of getting anything checked off my to-do list, I seem to be doing a little bit of everything and doing most of it wrong.

There was a bright spot today, a few actually. One being an email from my uncle with several decades-old photos of relatives attached. I invited my Dad to ancestry.com a couple weeks back and was delighted that he filled in hundreds of names in the family tree. It’s interesting, I have thousands upon thousands of images of complete strangers and don’t think I’d ever seen more than two images of my grandmother in her prime.

There’s something really enchanting to me to know that someone, someone I’ll never meet and who never even thought of a whisper of me, took photos of the people I love, of the people who were completely different people 60 years ago. Relatives long past, whose names I don’t even know, also pointed their cameras at my grandmother and her mother. We’re part of a legacy. I feel privileged to sneak peeks at these images, and these past lives, today.

So while I’m harumphing about bad and lost audio and resizing hundreds of images and juggling other images that are past due being edited, I give you my beautiful paternal grandmother around 1943. Ada Carolyn Brinson (maiden name Tuten), and whom I’ve only ever heard called “Granny,” “Mama” or “Mrs. Carolyn”. She was born in 1923 and she is still kicking today and probably doing a wordsearch.

How strange to see an image of my own grandmother, when she is younger than I.

And, because they made me laugh, some photos of my paternal grandfather, Buck Brinson, Sr.,  and his sister “Sissy” in the early 1920s. His expression, which is mirrored in every other photo I’ve seen of his youth, pretty much sums up my mood…

must be genetic.