worn out, but have some old family photos! Plus, kite flying - yay! :)

[derien]

We went to Easter Dinner at my cousin's, flew kites with the kids (well, one of the three kids), and looked at piles and piles of pictures with Pen and her father/my uncle.  (And his wife/her 'Ma,' but she, like eor, was more of a spectator for all the older photos, since they're not her family, as she's his second wife.)  My uncle can remember or figure out so much stuff about who it is in those incredibly old pictures - he's just amazing. 



Just before we left someone mentioned that Grammy's notebooks are a wonderful source of information.  I hadn't known of the existence of these notebooks, I have no idea how many there are or what sorts of things they cover.  I made a stab at getting Pen to let me take one or some of them home with us for eor to scan, but she resisted - I think she fears I might disappear them.  However, she separated out a bunch of pictures of me and my Mom, and a couple of other people, for me to take home.  I'm hoping that if we scan and return those she might start thinking that it's safe to let other things into our hands.  I say 'we,' but I mean eor - he's sweetly doing that for me right now.  It's not really any of his worry, of course, it's not his family, but he says it'll be payment enough if I stop bemoaning the fact that I have no old photos. ;) 

He says I looked a lot like a boy when I was quite small.  I'm kind of baffled by that statement, because all small children look about the same to me.  I can't tell the difference between boys and girls when they're little, so I can't make out why I should have looked like a boy.  However, everyone thought I was going to be a boy, before I was born.  Something about how my mother was carrying.  Consequently, all my baby clothes, when I was very small, were blue.  Also, this evening I nearly came to blows with everyone else when I insisted that was me on the bigwheel.  Everyone else said it was my youngest brother, but I knew the time period was not right.  "But you had piles of ringlets when you were little!" Pen's Ma insisted.  "Yes," I said, "most of the time - except for right after the neighbor boy threw burdocks in my hair and my mother had to cut it all off." 

I was also a very happy child, apparently.  People have commented on that, before.  I wonder what happened to me. 

Eor seems interested in the prospect of getting ahold of my grandmother's notebooks, too, because he feels they could be a valuable historical record.  She wrote the coolest notes on the backs of pictures, with lots of rambling about how this person's father worked in a mill or this person sang with the choir. 

I even snagged one photo of some ancestor in an outfit that has to be from the 1800.  It was so faded that nobody thought it would be scannable, but Eor thinks he can make it work.  I'm psyched.  This is just the tiniest sampling of the stuff Pen has, though.  I want it all.  In my greedy little clutches.  Or at least the digitized versions - she can have the hard copies.


I wish I could say more about the kite flying, aside from the fact that I had a lot of fun with this kid, my cousin Di's youngest.  He was good about listening to instruction and patient with the whole process of understanding the wind and the tension on the string, and I gave him lots of praise for his knack with getting the thing to work, because it's not an easy kite to get into the air.  He as also patient with my incredible inability to remember names, and screwing his up. :)  I think he's Jordy.

Meanwhile, eor worked hard to get the other kite to fly - there was something just wrongly designed about it, it was off balance, but he did pretty good with it.  And when he did get it up, Jordy wanted to try to attack with his - so, kite fighting is apparently just a natural outgrowth of kite flying.  He also said he wanted to be on the kite - I bet this kid will be hang gliding in a few years. :)

Comments

[mizzmarvel.livejournal.com]

Most of my baby clothes were blue also, but not because they thought I was a boy. (If you're carrying the baby low, it's supposedly a boy.) My mom just really liked blue.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Low, yeah, that was what Eor said, too. Back when I was born (just shortly after dinosaurs roamed the earth) it seems as though it may have been important to people to make sure the kid was in the right color. You know, so that they could get properly socially imprinted.

I told Eor that I must have narrowly missed being a boy, and he said that would explain a lot about me. ;)