Memories♫ Light the Corners of My Mind ♫.....

I stopped by the old homestead this past weekend on my way to the Roseland Cottage Craft Show which is just up the road.  A couple from near Worcester who own a second hand shop have been cleaning it out--basically taking what's left to resell and getting rid of the trash.  The house is empty now with only a small pile of boxes left that they haven't picked up yet.

Being there is not so emotional anymore.  It's less my old home and more just a piece of property.  It looks smaller somehow with all the stuff gone.  But you can now really see what a solid, well built house it is.

Before the estate sale and clean out I spent weeks going through drawers and boxes and managed to collect 6 large cartons of papers and pictures that now clutter my family room.  And that has become my latest project.  While the house no longer brings up any strong emotions, going through the pictures certainly does.

I thought I'd selectively pull out pictures and create albums for my brother and my daughters.  Many of the pictures have multiple copies and I certainly can make copies of the ones that don't.  I remember most of the events depicted in the pictures from the 1950s on.  The ones that tug at my heart are those taken before and shortly after my parents were married.  They look so different, carefree.  There's one with Mom and a puppy.  I always thought she hated animals--at least she never wanted us to have one.

Dad played lots of sports.  He played basketball for the Polish Eagles and played baseball with the Polish Tigers (Polish culture was alive & well in Southbridge then).  While there are lots of pictures from my parents' wedding I was surprised to find one from my maternal grandparents' wedding.  There were very few pictures of them at all.

I found one picture from Poland of my paternal great grandparents.  I wouldn't have known who they were but for the note on the back.  How I wish someone had labelled all the rest of the old pictures.  I'm sure they're mostly relatives, some from Poland others from France. But I now have no way of knowing.

But prize for the best find goes to the one picture I found of my father playing the violin.  He once told me that he took lessons as a child.   His fingers were too short for many of the chords so he gave it up.  It's my favorite.