My parents have been going through their cabinet of photos these past few weeks. Twice now, they've come over for dinner or to see the children bearing books, folders, and envelopes of pictures from years gone by. As is typical with the general flow of events in my house, chaos was in high gear with children running around, busily engaged in activities punctuated with calls of, "momma" every few minutes.
Things only become more confusing with two of the children's favorite people arriving at the door. Sometimes their arrival is met with excited cries of welcome, but not always as it depends on what the children are doing. As much as my children adore their grandparents if they're in the middle of making a school classroom with student stuffed animals or are playing an enthusiastic game of "popcorn" on the trampoline, we're hard-pressed to get them to even say a friendly 'hello.'
Regardless of the welcome my parents may initially receive, we seem to always be in the middle of a mess—one we're trying to keep under control. My parents are of the very understanding sort and we've briefly looked through the pictures at the time with the promise of a more in-depth review when things calm down later.
Today was one of those days. My mother had brought some pictures over and once the children were off on their own, in this case on a walk in the woods with another parent, she and I sat down to look through some of the pictures.
It had been a long time since we'd last looked at the pictures, longer still since they were originally taken. Some of them were obvious with the people pictured obvious and the occasion for the photo memorable. Others weren't so easy to suss out. My mother knew some that I didn't remember while I recognized people she was unsure about.
One of the photos of another girl and me at about the age of my daughter was so memorable and yet I wasn't sure who it was. I had seen that particular picture many times in my life and I knew I should know who the other child was. I remembered she had been someone I spent time with at that age. I remembered she wore more "girly" clothes while I wore more tomboy garb. This would seemingly have been obvious because she was in a sundress with wooden-soled sandals popular in the day whereas I was wearing colorful sneakers, corduroy pants, and t-shirt.
I remembered more than that though. I remembered a memory of looking at the photo over the years since it had been taken. My mother would comment about how she (whoever she was) liked to wear dresses. I asked my mother if it was my cousin and she said maybe that was it. At that point chaos or "mommy" happened and we had to put the pictures away for later review.
After my mother went home I looked through more of the pictures but I kept looking at that one photo and thinking I knew who it was, almost willing it to come to me. Out of the depths, the name Kelly surfaced. Kelly who though? I remembered who she was then, not the name, which I felt was correct, but had no memory of calling her that, but the person herself. I remembered where she lived, what her back yard looked like, where she lived and that her parents had a grand piano in the living room of their modern house.
I called my mother and told her I'd remembered. When I told her, she remembered who. She knew her last name and that we became friends because my mother worked with her father. All that from a photo of two children standing on some steps.
The Big Boy Update: My son is having a hard day. He is behaving very badly. He's repeatedly done things to other people's personal property because they're doing something he doesn't like or he doesn't like what they've said or done. He got in significant trouble with me this morning, caused my mother to lose her temper at him at lunch, took his sister's things this afternoon because he just wanted them, was mean to two boys later because he didn't like something that happened, destroying their property and then had a very poor choice of words to his father, causing him to lose YouTube for up to a year. It's not good. He's not going to win going about things this way. Unfortunately, all he's doing is losing.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter made a mistake and cut through, "squishy," a squishy toy I had gotten her at 5 Below. She wanted to go back today and get another one to replace it, using her own money. She liked them so much, she bought the box of them. She's rarely wantes to spend her money on things. We've found 5 Below is the exception though.
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