MYSTERIOUS ALBUMS, unknown lives

My recent posts on my own family photos reminded me of a vintage photo album I bought in a thrift shop a decade or so back. I loved the "period" look of it--the black pages annotated with white ink, the traditional photo corners, the textured cover. I was amazed to see that virtually all of its several hundred photos were intact. And yes, being the sentimental crazy woman I am, I was saddened by it. Here was the history of an entire personal and family life, lovingly created, a small treasure but one that is both complex and precious...left to languish on a shelf with a ten dollar price tag. Naturally, I could do nothing other but scoop it up for "adoption."

My photo-expert pal CJ scanned the images and also some of the actual pages for a project we did several years ago; I've added one of those scans to this post. As it shows, this photo-owner did caption her photos, and in a graceful handwriting few of us today can match. I've sometimes said that I'm going to do a web search and see if I can find the descendents of some of the names in the book. So far, though, I haven't done much more than browse the album, use some of the pictures in art and blog posts, and simply enjoy it all.

And that enjoyment is the paradox of my ownership of this piece of ephemera. The family pictured in the album might not have valued it, or perhaps they just didn't know it was there for the asking. But I, a complete stranger, love it. I remember its dogs, its houses, its trips to beaches and lakeside cabins. To me it is precious in part because of its mystery. It isn't my family; it's the human family. Maybe that's why I never quite get around to searching for the families it pictures. Maybe it reverberates all the more because of what it doesn't say.

CJ SAYS: "envision seven generations"

When I turned on my computer I found book designer, systems genius and just-plain-interesting-thinker CJ Madigan's new blog post, "Envisioning Seven Generations," in my email inbox. If you're interested in legacy or personal stories, it's one to read (just click on its title and the link will get you to it).

CJ reminds us that once we're gone, the information and stories we take for granted in our own lives will be as unknowable to those seven generations in the future as peoples' lives seven generations ago are to us today. We assume that no one really cares, but that's just not the case. Her words spoke to me powerfully because as I organize my parents' photo collection, I'm beset with exactly the kind of bafflement she describes. Where was this picture of my great-grandparents taken? What is the name of the best man at Mom and Dad's wedding? Is this Victorian baby photo my grandmother or someone else--and if it's a grandmother, which one? When exactly did dad's family come to this country?

I don't know the answers to any of those questions, or to countless others like them, and I dearly wish I did. I feel a kind of grief when I realize that I didn't take advantage of the countless years I had to ask some of these questions;

One of the things CJ's post inspired me to do is deceptively simple: to caption the back of my own photos with things like the names of the people pictured, the place the picture was taken, and the approximate date. I've promised myself not to get perfectionistic, just to get down what I know. It's tempting to think that no one will care that one photo is of my college dorm room junior year and the next is of my off-campus apartment senior year, that this guy is my first boss and this other guy is the man I loved in my thirties. But as CJ reminded me, I can't know that for sure...and better safe than sorry.

In the spirit of this post, I'll close by telling you that the photo at its beginning is of my twin brother Andy on the lawn of our family house in Caldwell, New Jersey in 1960 or thereabouts. The front yard had thirteen majestic old trees that offered both delight (jumping in giant leaf piles) and torture (helping Mom and Dad rake) every autumn. Our property had a wall that raised it above the street by eight feet or so in the front; the white shape you can see on the ground under the leaves is a big old canvas dropcloth. In the days before day finally got a leaf blower, we raked the leaves onto it, dumped it over the wall, and raked the leaves into the gutter for pickup from there. Andy and I had small, child-friendly rakes, so maybe Dad posed him with a full-scale one for this shot. Either way, I've always loved this particular photo of Andy, with its combination of solidity and skepticism. "You've got to be kidding me," his expression seems to say; "this job's going on forever."