The past is always there

Been a long, long time.  For months now I have had ideas of things to write swirling in my head, but since before Christmas it has been one thing or another that has disrupted my writing life -- be it the holidays, kids home on break, kids home on weekends to ski, kids ... they've always been so good at getting in the way (in a good way, of course!) Then we had trying to get my parent's condo ready, in the form of sorting through piles, then all of a sudden that was halted when there was a fire in their building, and then six weeks later all of those piles were transferred to their new home and required going through once again!  It's been an odd winter, when for the past four I was always somewhere down south with them, but this year it has been about getting them set up in their new digs.  Oh well.  Keeps life interesting I suppose.

But the biggest loser in this has been my writing, and oh how I have missed it.  Yesterday the kids and I were over at my parent's house and my father was showing us some old pictures.  My grandfather was an excellent archivist, and made sure the majority of pictures that he had were labeled.  For example, there is a picture of "Lisa Madden's great, great grandmother" that hangs in my living room.  Years ago, when Peter and I were cleaning out my grandfather's house to be sold, we came across two pictures in the attic that were in decent shape.  Peter asked me who they were, but of course I had no idea.  He carried them downstairs, and that was when we saw what my grandfather had written on the back of them.  How cool is that?  I still have yet to find out what her name is, though her daughter was Florence, who was my grandfather's mother, and she is shown in this fabulous picture, on the left, then her mother (Lisa Madden's great, great grandmother) is in the middle, but the picture is labeled "grammy!"  Oh, so close and yet so far to obtaining the woman's name!  On the right is Florence's sister, Antoinette, which is also labeled on the picture as never having been married.  Oh, the story a simple (and labeled) photograph can show.

The house is in Antrim, and I have countless memories of the house and grounds as my grandfather lived there the majority of his life.  Apparently Lisa Madden's great, great grandfather loved to build birdhouses, and I can remember much smaller versions in the back field when I was younger.  Or maybe it was my grandfather's father Tom who liked to build bird houses?  I get confused, and I would like to thank you, Grandpa, for labeling these photos, and I am sure you are seeing the fruits of your labor being appreciated.

This one is fun because of the story on the back: "Tom Madden (my father's grandfather) and my father, went in the ice business. Bought ice in Peterboro and delivered in Antrim during WW2.  Often the truck sat here with ice melting while he (my father) played baseball across the road and made the family furious."

Love it!

In this final photo, my great-grandmother Florence is at the top.  The photo is labeled "Ma at the top," and that is it.  So we can only use our imaginations as to why there were dressed so!

I have always felt a strong kinship to my Madden side, and this picture hangs in my dining room, and when I look at her (oh how I wish I knew her name!) I think we have similar features.

 

I apologize for the poor picture (with all of the reflections) but I took it off the wall and tried to picture it without light and it was too dark.  As you can see, as written on the back, she is ...

And all of the above is why it is so important to label photographs (though in this day and age they are put into a folder with the person's name on them I suppose).

One last aside, another picture that I looked at said that Florence (my father's grandmother) died at the age of 55.  My father doesn't remember how, and I was struck at how young that was.  And what about her mother?  Are there pictures of her grown old?  Makes me want to look through even more pictures!