MONDAY POTPOURRI: REVISITING THE PAST & THEN MOVING ON

Seven-year-olds

 

When I was poking around among my photo files, I found these and made a collage.  On the left, there I am, Rain in all her messiness.  My mother always sent me off to school with perfectly groomed hair and I always managed to mess it up by picture time.

On the right, my two “twin” granddaughters, Fiona and Aubrey, both born in February 1997, were seven here.  And not at all worried about their hair or clothes.  How far we have come!

That snow weekend in Big Bear was so much fun.  I loved capturing the moments, and adored this cabin owned by my son Brett.

 

 

He later sold it, but we still have the photos and the memories.

 

Here’s a shot of my mother and me at about age four, I think.

 

 

When I was very young, she still controlled my appearance to some extent.  Less messy, but not as stiff and formal as her photo.

 

Perhaps my trip down memory lane today has something to do with books recently read, both spotlighting an era all too familiar to me:  the forties and fifties.

Pain, Parties, Work, is about Sylvia Plath during one pivotal summer.

 

 

And The Unwitting, by Ellen Feldman, also spotlights that time period.

 

 

Our story begins on November 22, 1963, when we meet Charlie and Nell Benjamin, poised for an ordinary day, living the writer’s life in Manhattan. But nothing about this day would be ordinary. Grief, both the country’s grief and her own, would overwhelm Nell for the foreseeable future.

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I am happily moving on to lighter fare with today’s read, Katwalk, by Maria Murnane, the story of a young woman approaching thirty, read to cast aside the staid life of an accountant for adventures in Manhattan.

 

 

Do you like to revisit the past?  And afterwards, are you compelled to move forward?  How do you mix things up?

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