… for this photo of my mother in Oslo just a few years ago. She always appreciated the fact that Norwegians throw a big party every year for her birthday and she got to visit the country several times over the years, as part of her many travel adventures.
I can’t keep up. I’ve got a backlog of stuff I want to post about, but there aren’t enough hours in the day. Just the politics news alone is overwhelming (in case you haven’t been keeping up, John McCain is evil and such a pathetic liar!). It’s being a fun, busy weekend, though, so I’m not getting caught up any time soon. In the meantime, I’m going to take a tiny break from the present — here’s a vintage photo of two of my favorite people, in a setting that seems very blue. Happy Birthday to one of them!
I’ve been thumbing through some old photos lately and have discovered quite a few overlooked gems in the archives, so at some point I think I might start a new feature for sharing blasts from the past. In the meantime, though, in honor of Father’s Day, which much of the world is celebrating today — with some notable exceptions — I thought I’d share a couple of photos.
I don’t get to spend Father’s Day with my father this year, but last year was a treat because the holiday fell on the same weekend as our annual family gathering. When he’s not at the office, my father can usually be found on the tennis court, so that is where I captured the second image below. The first one probably reaches back almost fifty years, for a study in (surprisingly little) contrast. I found it last year when I was perusing the old family photo albums. I think it’s a picture my mother snapped back when my parents were still a carefree couple — before the five children, and the wonderful chaos that arrived in our wake.
I think the same easygoing, energetic spirit is visible in both images.
Happy Mother’s Day! I’ve come up with a little holiday treat this year, featuring a few of my favorite vintage photos, which highlight some extraordinary women — mothers I miss very much, though they all still inhabit my daily life; they are part of my very being, in fact. These are also really neat photos. The first two are probably close to 40 years old and the last likely dates back 25 years or more.
This first one is of my parents. My father’s glasses and sideburns date the picture more than anything else. I suspect it was a candid shot, taken by someone who was just snapping pictures, but still I think both the composition and depth of field are well done. The blues in this image — from my mother’s eyes, to my father’s shirt, and into the background — dazzle me. This is a typical moment, with my mother open to all that surrounds her, while my father, no matter what, always found her to be the most fascinating thing in the room. (Believe it or not, my father hasn’t changed much since this photo was taken. He has a bit of gray, but that’s about the only difference. He wore the same tux to my wedding that he wore to his own and I’m sure it still fits him today.)
This next photo always makes me laugh. It captures a brief and unique point in fashion history, when some very proper women not only wore these dresses out in public, but then went so far as to pose for a picture together in them! The woman on our right is my maternal grandmother, sharing a moment with her sisters. These women all went on to live well into their 90s, and were very accomplished — especially for females of their generation, who typically stayed home to raise families and then struggled to entertain themselves once their kids were grown. They all graduated from college, and at times bucked the trend by having jobs. In a small town near Memphis, Tennessee, my grandmother was the first white teacher to work in an all-black school in the early 60s. She had a framed classroom photo of her with her students that she proudly displayed for decades after.
This last photo was taken probably ten or fifteen years after the first two, by my then-teenage cousin, who had recently gotten his first SLR camera. The subject is my paternal grandmother, holding her own baby picture, which was probably taken circa 1903. This grandmother was also a working woman. Her career included an era during my childhood when she sold tickets at the local (one-screen!) movie theater. I was so proud to be her granddaughter because she was lucky enough to work in that magical glassed-in booth, where everyone who went to the movies got to talk with her. It was like she was sitting on a throne, and all the people in town were standing in line just to see her (nevermind that they got a movie in the bargain as well)!
