Old letters and Photos

Old letters and photos

I was just back in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with my sisters, Marjie and Amy, sorting through boxes of stuff in the house that I grew up in. Pittsburgh in January is cold and snowy, perfect weather for hunkering down and staying inside. I equate this undertaking to taking a teaspoon full of liquid out of a 50 gallon aquarium. It is hard to see progress; there is so much to do. We have opted to take our time and gather together every few months so that we can celebrate the memories and poke through things together. It is a luxury that we are able to do that. As a bonus, my younger daughter Alana flew in from Michigan to join us for the weekend. I grew up in a house that was filled to the brim with books on every subject. (We will start dealing with the books at the next visit.) There were plenty of costumes and odd clothes with which to play dress-up. At one point there was even a hoop skirt; I have no idea where that came from. Having a mom who was a kindergarten teacher made it a given that we had plenty of odd things on hand for variety of arts and crafts activities. The last visit was geared toward ridding the house of the obvious junk: https://nursejudynvp.blogspot.com/2017/09/organizing-your-crapi-mean-treasures.html This visit we focused on the shoe boxes jam packed with letters, papers and pictures. My family, going back to great grandparents, were faithful correspondents and it seems that they didn’t believe in throwing away letters. This is now truly the proverbial mixed blessing. Even though it is a daunting task, there is something magical about holding an old letter. We lose something in this digital age. In regards to the photos, my father loved to take pictures of everything. Some are in envelopes, many are duplicates, some are in albums ( my mom’s efforts), but the majority are loose in boxes. The unflattering, out of focus photos got the same treatment as the good ones. They are all waiting to be sorted, all gazillion of them. My grandmother’s photos and letters are there as well. Some of the photos date back to the 1800s! I took the opportunity to reach out to some cousins that might be interested in checking out old family treasures and we had a fabulous gathering of people who had driven hundreds of miles to get together and help us identify the people in some of the older photos Here is a copy of the Facebook post that I added during the trip: I got a gift from the universe today. We have been going through an amazing stash of family letters and photos this week. Reading the love letters from my grandfather Asher to my grandmother Flora was one of the highlights. We realized that somehow or other, none of us knew the story of how they met. How could that be? The loss of my mom last year was staggering. We couldn't just turn to her and ask her for the story. I then remembered that 30 years ago or so, my grandmother had been interviewed by the National Council of Jewish women as part of an Oral History project. I googled, Flora Isaacs Oral History and there it is, two hours of my grandmother talking, divided into 4 parts. This is something to savor. We listened to the first side last night. This evening Amy and I listened to part 2 and sure enough we got to hear Grandma tell us the tale of how she and Grandpa met. We had all sorts of lovely serendipity. My sister found an old pair of rhinestone folding opera glasses tucked out of the way in a small box in the attic. She brought them down for us all to see. Later that day, as I sorted through piles of letters, I happened to take the time to read one from my grandmother to my mom: “Mrs. So and So brought you a gift. They are wonderful little opera glasses that fold up; make sure you write a thank you note.” Okay lovely readers, here is your takeaway assignment. Figure out who are the people in your photos. Even if they are digital, make sure that you manage to accurately label them. If you have old photos, get your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles... etc. to look through them with you, and tell you who the people are. This information is lost otherwise. Don’t save the crappy photos. Having a smaller collection of good pictures is much more valuable. Get the stories! Do you know how YOUR grandparents met?