I spent the day today buried in the past.
I discovered that my obsession with journaling and writing is very much an inherited one.
Piles and piles of journals.
Some dating all the way back to the 1880's.
Ridiculous details of everything imaginable.
Post cards. Stacks and stacks of them.
Paper over 100 years old.
Photos full of history.
My mom let me go through the first of boxes and boxes of family stuff. It's embarrassing how much I enjoy a good organization project. Add old photos and journals on top of that? This was like an early Christmas present. Reading my great-great grandfather's journals. His post cards to the girl he loved and the ones she wrote back. My great uncle's MIT college scores. Old secrets revealed in letters. Postcards from my grandfather when he was at summer camp as a child. They didn't throw anything away, it seemed.
I can see, as well, how much journaling is in my blood. And photography. And travel. All these things were very prevelent in the scraps they left behind. Post cards from Hawaii in the 40's. Photos of cross country trips to the Grand Canyon by car in the 40's. (Those photos are incredible, btw.) I am quite the product of my family passed down from generation to generation.
If only I also got some of those genius genes too....
1 comment:
I always remember your great grandpa folding up a paper napkin after a family gathering and putting it in his coat pocket, so it doesn't surprise me that everything got kept. As far as genious genes I think we all got them, just in different forms, and photography,I could just imagine what daddy (grandpa) could do with a camera of today!
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