so, my mom recently asked me to do her the "favor" of organizing about 25 years worth of family photos, and i have to say, my immediate reaction was to be way less than thrilled. in fact, i believe my response was something along the lines of, "oh, mom, i wish i could, but i really just don't want to," which of course, did not deter her. so there are now about 20 photo albums just sitting on my living room floor, and i have been completely ignoring them for the last week because that's usually how i deal with things that i don't want to deal with (side note: this strategy has not yet worked to date, but i will probably keep trying in the hopes that it someday will).
last night i decided to at least crack them open and check out the photos...and before i knew it, 3 hours had gone by and i'd gone through 8 years of my parent's lives. i started with the albums from the early 1970's, right after they got married - and a full ten years before i was even around. looking at photos of trips my parents took, friends they had, holidays they spent with their families, made me feel like i was seeing them in a new light and getting to know them as totally different people. not just "mom and dad," but 2 people who were young, crazy in love with each other, and who had fun lives that didn't revolve around me (that part was a little hard to deal with). as i sat there and turned page after page, i was struck so many times with the idea that they'd had an entire life - a full 8 years together - before my sister and i came along, and (weird as it may sound) i kind of wish i had been able to know them then. i found a photo of my mom's parents and my dad's parents together and since i don't remember my dad's father and i barely remember his mom, it never really occurred to me that when my parents got married, their families all spent time together, and at the risk of sounding like a sap, there's not a whole lot i wouldn't give to have been able to be in the room with both sets of my grandparents when they were still around (and be old enough to remember it).
my mom has always teased me about how sentimental i am, but i wouldn't save all the stuff i save (dog tags from an old family pet, movie and concert ticket stubs dating back to when i was in high school, scraps of the kitchen wallpaper from our old house...good grief, i just made myself sound like a hoarder, didn't i??) if it didn't mean anything to me. and part of knowing myself and who i am comes from knowing who i came from. so, i suppose i should thank my mom for giving me the chance to (literally) open the book on my own history and for also reminding me that sometimes doing someone a favor can actually end up feeling more like them doing a favor for you. (although i secretly suspect that she may have just wanted to rub in the fact that in the 1970s, she had hair that would have made farrah fawcett green with envy. i wouldn't put that past her...)
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