We are getting ready to cook walleye and go to Eleanor's for a Father's day dinner. Lots of memories of families have been discussed this weekend and she talked quite a bit about her own family. She remembered when her sister Florence and brother Bob came for a visit two years ago. She commented that Bob had told her that he doesn't really have many memories of her. She was 13 when Bob was born, and had left for nursing school and then WWII when he was 4 years old.
We talked about how families today move apart and don't get to see one another on a regular basis. I told her that when she moved here, she was essentially a person I remembered from 35 years ago when I left home to go to college. I am thankful for the opportunity to reconnect with my mother after three and one half decades. I regret that I had didn't have the time to do the same with my father.We are the people who others remember us to be; unfortunately for some those memories are 30-40 years old. Take some time to reconnect with family and talk about the present, not the past. It would be a good day to remember our fathers and the families we all were a part of years ago.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Cards.
Barbara has been visiting Eleanor this weekend and and has been helping her sort out her cards. Eleanor has hundreds of cards, mostly for birthdays in stacks in her apartment. Barb found cards from Janet that Eleanor received when Jan and Steve were in Greece, and an Easter card that her mother sent her a week before she died.
I have undertaken the same project at least twice before, but after I get everything sorted, Eleanor wants to look at them and make sure that I haven't put anything in a pile that she might not want to throw away. We wind up with the cards resorted, but nothing thrown away. I would guess that Mary Ann has also had the card cleaning experience when she comes to visit.
If a card has been kept for 50 years, she probably has some reason for keeping it. It is hard to decide what stays and what needs to go. I have things in my drawers that have been there for years because some attachment or memory keeps me from tossing the item. We have boxes at our house that seem to become fuller each time we downsize Eleanor's apartment. Glass birds, crocheted items that Aunt Margaret made, Shoji dogs from Okinawa: these items all represent a decision by Eleanor to not discard a memory that is somehow connected with the item. It is tragic that as peoples lives are downsized to ever smaller spaces, that the decisions as to what stays and what goes are being made for Eleanor and not by her.
I have undertaken the same project at least twice before, but after I get everything sorted, Eleanor wants to look at them and make sure that I haven't put anything in a pile that she might not want to throw away. We wind up with the cards resorted, but nothing thrown away. I would guess that Mary Ann has also had the card cleaning experience when she comes to visit.
If a card has been kept for 50 years, she probably has some reason for keeping it. It is hard to decide what stays and what needs to go. I have things in my drawers that have been there for years because some attachment or memory keeps me from tossing the item. We have boxes at our house that seem to become fuller each time we downsize Eleanor's apartment. Glass birds, crocheted items that Aunt Margaret made, Shoji dogs from Okinawa: these items all represent a decision by Eleanor to not discard a memory that is somehow connected with the item. It is tragic that as peoples lives are downsized to ever smaller spaces, that the decisions as to what stays and what goes are being made for Eleanor and not by her.
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