In preparation for our upcoming move, I am encouraging My Husband (bless his soul, because this is not an easy undertaking) to scan our hoard of family photos. We have the last 10+ years of pictures in digital form on the computer anyway, but before that there are years and years of images….
The real joy of scanning a family photographic treasure trove is the ability to preserve, and to share more broadly, the rare images many of our family members have never seen: the aging baby pictures of our fathers, in the arms of their fathers
(pictures left to us by like-minded grandmothers and aunts), or the photos of fathers and uncles in their uniforms,
and the amazing, if now fading, photographic travel records of surprisingly intrepid family adventurers from previous generations.
How could we have somehow assumed that we were the first – or second – generation to go anywhere? Really? It’s absurd when you look at the evidence, and consider the long tradition of Foreign Service careers in my family, for instance. Family lore has it that my Grandfather traveled overland to China, learning Chinese on the way. My Father and Uncle were born in Peiping, as it was known then. On the other side of the family, my Grandmother’s Father was born in the Philippines, and lived and worked in South Africa for a time. My Grandmother attended a convent school in Italy for awhile, before marrying my Grandfather and moving with him to China, Spain, and Britain, among other places. My own parents lived in Okinawa, Saigon, and Berne, Switzerland with their young family. It makes our 12 years in the United Kingdom and our holiday travels look pretty tame, doesn’t it?
Though maybe traveling is like the experience of a bride on her wedding day, or of first-time parents. For each individual it happens for the very first time, all over again. Whatever the case, somehow our sense of what our parents’ and grandparents’ lives might have been undergoes a seismic shift when we see the photographic evidence.
And of that happens, apparently, generation to generation. The Boy, for instance, recently looked at photos of us, his parents at twenty-something, and said, “You look so ….(awkward pause)…energetic.”
Among the happiest discoveries to be shared with extended family are the portraits of joyful brides through the generations.
In 1911.
In 1952.
In 1982.
What are your family’s most prized photographs, and how do you share them?
