Keeper of the Photos

Down in my basement, I have a big Rubbermaid tub that's been nagging at me for over six years. It's full of my grandmother's photo albums.

I'm not sure how I wound up being designated "keeper of the photos." After my grandmother passed away, my uncle took some time off work and cleaned out her house. He divided up her belongings among the children and grandchildren, and donated whatever furniture and books were left after everyone took what they wanted. But he also left boxes for each grandchild, and it's interesting to see what we all wound up with.

My sister, who has taken the huge responsibility of hosting the extended family for Thanksgiving dinner, got all the silverware. It's not valuable silverware, but there's plenty of it, and she does use it on holidays when she has a houseful of company. It's fun to eat Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house and use the same silverware we used as children when we ate at Nanny's.

I don't know who got the potato masher, but I bet there would have been a fight over it if we'd all been in the house at the same time.

I wound up with an interesting combination of stuff in my box. It contained the tools that used to be in the drawer by the back door (some of which I can't identify), a new box of envelopes, and the more-recent of my grandmother's photos. By "more recent" I mean that these were taken when my cousins and I were children. The childhood photos of previous generations were divided up among my mother, aunt and uncle. There were also several copies of my grandmother's wedding picture, with the entire wedding party.

That last is the only photo I've dealt with. My sister, brother and cousins were offered copies, and I framed mine and hung it on the dining room wall. And now I've got a box full of pictures, including Polariods labeled "My birthday cake 1979" and "My Christmas tree 1979." There are a lot of pictures of my cousin, 12 years my junior, who was born right around the time my grandmother retired.

This summer the kids and I are going to sort out all those pictures. I'm going to ignore their comments about my bad '70s hair and worse '70s fashion, and let them help me divide up the pictures so that my sister, brother and cousins can all have a part of these memories. I have the feeling that my cousin's pile is going to be pretty big.

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