Snap By Snap

Teddy was the Chow Chow we got after Gladys and Mr. Brett (my mom's dog) died. The picture above is the day we got him, and that's the nicest he ever looked (although maybe he just looks good compared to the awful disco shirt I'm wearing). Teddy was a lion who roared when the doorbell rang, frightening dates and door-to-door salesmen alike. He was really Dad's dog. He generally did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. Kind of like a huge, not-too-bright body builder. Nobody messed with Teddy.To be fair, though, my parents loved that dog, and I think in his own dumb-jock way, he loved them, too.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign;
Blocking up the scenery, breaking my mind;
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the signs

It just isn't a vacation without a few signs. The sign below is from our trip to Yellowstone this year. I edited out the five other languages it was written in. My favorite part was the 1960's illustration. Evidently this is an effective sign, as I don't think it's changed in years. It was so effective, actually, that a little boy who accidently slipped off the boardwalk was hysterical at his near death. And, as I said in our vacation blog, the sign strongly implies that boys are silly, reckless beings (possibly true) and that girls are totally useless in a crisis (absolutely not true!).

And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down, and pray

But when they passed the plate around at the end of it all,

I didn't have a penny to pay

So I got me a pen and a paper, and I made up my own little sign,

I said thank you Lord for thinking of me, I alive and doing fine.

 

The picture above is of my Mom, Aunt Maybelle, and me. Maybelle was really my Mom's mother, but I grew up calling her Aunt Maybelle. She lived in Arizona in a very exciting high rise apartment building where she always had butterscotch candies in a dish. For a five year old this was exciting stuff. We called her Aunt Maybelle because she did not want anyone, even us, to know that she was really our mom's mother, and our grandmother. After 'going away' to have her baby, Maybelle tried to secretly care for her baby for about two years until she became ill with rickets, and had to be adopted by another family. Maybelle stayed in touch, and sometime in her teens my mom finally figured out who her real mother was. They did stay in touch, but what a complicated relationship it must have been. Maybelle sometimes sent presents at Christmas - one I remember was a frilly store bought dress (my mom made most of my dresses) and matching socks - and I think she visited us once. She never married, and never had any other children, and always lived alone. Even when my mom died of cancer at age 49, Maybelle did not want to be listed on the obituary as the mother, for fear someone would find out. She came to the funeral, but refused to be identified.

So now, all these years later, I wonder about Maybelle. It's very likely that she went to a maternity home to deliver her baby in 1922. Although women had gained new freedoms such as the vote, unwed mothers were still considered to be mentally ill or even criminal. I was amazed to read that one in four pregnancies ended in abortion the year my mother was born. Considering the societal pressures Maybelle undoubtedly experienced, I have a lot of sympathy for her circumstances when my Mom was born. I'm so glad she did not abort her, and that she managed to stay in touch with her even when adoption became necessary. What I don't understand is her 50 year insistence on the keeping of the secret. Whatever her reasons, she lost out on a deeper relationship with her daughter and family in order to devote herself to the lifelong nurturing of a secret.

The best thing about kids is that they are transparent: What you see is what you get. When they are happy, they are HAPPY. When they are sad, they are SAD. They find joy in the simplest things. They can get lost in the reverie of play and imagination without a care in the world. In the picture above I was four and had just received this amazing green, blue, and red battery operated tin train for Christmas. My memory of that train is of how it looked as I lay on the floor and watched it go -

1982: The picture above was taken in my parent's backyard the day we announced our engagement. I was 20 years old, and we had been dating for about 3 years. Over the years, photos have revealed a lot about us: Our hairstyle successes and failures, weight changes, a total lack of fashion sense, happiness, and sometimes sadness. But the thing I find most interesting, though, is that somewhere along the way, our pictures began to reveal our connection. Maybe I'm the only one who can see it, but somewhere along the way our connection to each other became visible.We did not begin to dress alike (thank heavens), I don't think we began to look alike, it's . . . hard to explain. 2009: Amy's graduation from CCHS. It was a wonderful experience that reinforced hard decisions we had made in the years before about parenting and educating our daughter. What an adventure it has been, and is!

I worked on a post tonight but didn't quite get it done. So, just for fun, here's something I ran across while browsing old photos. It is priceless!
When I was in college I worked at the library (shocking, isn't it?) and while there I was sorting through old educational film catalogs and randomly came across a page with the above picture. It was an ad for a high school educational film on the dangers of alcohol abuse. I stopped and stared at it, thinking there was no possible chance it could really be Mark in that picture. But it sure did look like him! So, just for fun I copied the page and showed it to him that evening. And it was him! When he was in high school, a film company making health and safety films needed some teens for a short film and picked him to play a part - I don't think he even had any lines, but he made it into the catalog! Isn't he cute? I'm not sure he's a very convincing drunk, though . . .