Over the river and through the woods,

I'm going to write down my memories from time to time and put them here. Some will be stories my sons have heard a million times but I want to save for them anyway. Others will be things that spark a thought of how I became the me I am today.  This is the first of them.



Over the river and through the woods,


I celebrated Thanksgiving last night. Not on a table but in my mind. My memories of Thanksgivings past filled my mind with familiar smells and faces I knew and loved. My Uncle was a doctor. He had a practice in a small town. He and his wife raised six children there, in the same white house that doubled as his office. My Aunt was his nurse. Every Thanksgiving we made that drive from our city to their town. We'd leave early with a station wagon full of cookies, Christmas gifts and the smell of my Mom's "good" perfume. Not the Avon stuff she wore on less special days but a dab or two of her Chanel No. 5 she kept in a place of honor on her dresser. We had no dvd player to keep us amused so we watched the world go by. We'd call off each landmark we passed "I see the white church", "there's the huge oak tree". Each thing we passed meant we were that much closer. The ride always seemed more beautiful when the snow had made the trip before us. The lakes looked much nicer wearing a coat of ice.
I took this  same ride with my older brother when my Uncle passed. I did it without Map-quest to guide me, I memorized it long ago. The huge Oak is gone now but the white church is still there.
We'd arrive at my Uncle's and unpack in one giant cloud of people. I'd go first to the dining room to see if anything was new.  I'm not a fan of taxidermy. Damn things keep looking at me no matter which way I turned. My Uncle got paid in many ways; cash, cow, taxidermy. He had a giant zoo of wildlife from around that part of the woods. Birds, critters, even a fish or two. They lived around the dining room and I always looked because when you're pretty sure something might come to life and pack your eyes out you kinda want to know what type of create it might be.
 I was the youngest cousin so I'd have to tag along behind my brother once we got there. I'd give up after a bit and head to the kitchen where my Aunt, Mom, and two girl cousins would be bustling around, each with a job to do.  My stuffing is her recipe, my applesauce bread from my mother. I would curl up in a chair in the corner and learn against the radiator and listen to them talk and catch up.
But when the football started I'd head back into the den. That's where my Uncle held his place. My Dad wasn't much of a sports fan so he'd read the paper and pretend he wasn't napping behind the pages he held up. My cousins would be in and out,almost men with lives of their own and friends to visit while home. But me, I'd sit on the footstool and watch football. I became fascinated when a cousin had explained yards and penalties to me. My Uncle was a stern man. A tall man with a firm opinion on just about everything. Smiles from his were earned not freely handed out.
My Uncle hated the Detroit Lions and would treat us all to a lecture about them. Turns out their quarterback went to a rival college and he graduated with a bias. I'm a square peg of a person. I decided to embrace the Lions. I'm pretty sure, looking back, that I had bigger and brass-er balls than any of the male family members. I wish I could remember the look on my Uncle's face the first time I announced my newly found loyalty. I only remember it being both of us in there, with Dad asleep behind his small town news paper, and we emoted every play in the game and many years later when I visited him in his Alzheimer's facility he remembered me loving those damn Lions and smiled. A smile earned over many Thanksgiving games.
Being that my Uncle was a doctor there wasn't a year where he didn't leave the table to stitch someone up or even deliver a baby that came a week too early.  The buzzer would ring or we'd hear the fire trucks go by and he'd excuse himself and leave the table. My Aunt would follow and his children would just keep eating without looking up. This was normal to them. Nothing to see here folks, get back to your eating.
And we ate. All of us at a table that grew four times it's size every Thanksgiving day. We needed it for all the people, especially as my cousins married and had kids. We also needed it for the food it held. All the favorite and a few new. So much food and so many people.
And we ate. And ate. And ate.
And laughed and cried and sang along to the radio. The women in the kitchen warm and cozy. The men in the den full and happy.
I went there in my head last night. Trying to remember the fuzziest memories and wondering why we  don't do this anymore. I guess we all grew up and then one by one our parents died. My Aunt, then Uncle, my Dad then Mom. Some cousins on one coast, a few on the other, the rest in between or overseas. We've all got grand-kids, we've all got lives. And we've all got memories. For me Thanksgiving is still 'over the river and through the woods' so many many years ago. How lucky I was to live it, how lucky am I to still remember it.

Photographic memories

What to do with old photos? The real kind of photos, not the ones we take that never touch film. Some of my readers don't know what film is. They never had a Brownie or an Instamatic. They never bought film in cartridges or rolls, they never had to have it developed. Taking pictures used to be a process, you'd buy the film, use flash bulbs, using it sparingly because not only did you have to buy the film you also had to pay to have it developed. You'd either take it to a store and hand it over or you'd mail it off in the prepaid envelope and wait for a week or two to find the packet of photos in your mailbox. The only selfies you took were when your thumb accidentally got in the way of the lens or you hit the shutter when the camera was pointing down and you had a lovely picture of your left foot.
Those of you nodding your heads along with me know what I speak of. You also have photos or slide. Slide are photos you have to work twice as hard to see. But you have them, I have them. So what do we do with them?
I have mountains of photos. I don't throw them out because I dreamed once that I threw out all my photos and the people in them ceased to exist. Any of you book writing people who want to use that idea, it might make for a nice sci-fi short story. Just promise me I can read it! I knew my dream was a dream  but since then I've had a hard time throwing photos away. So I keep them and then the pile grows and grows and you know where this is headed... avalanche!
Now my dilemma, what do I do with these photos. Do I scan them and save them to some cloud in the sky? Do I learn to scrapbook and put them in nice neat piles of books? Should I return some to the people in them? I really don't know but I do know something has to give because there are too many of them. But how do you throw away memories like these:

Yes that my brother and me. I have photos of us growing up, of my kids growing up, of relatives as far back as cameras span. I have tin types, Kodachrome, black and white, color and Polaroid. I have slides, portraits, school photos, and negatives that ended up stray without an envelope to call home. I've got bins of old photo albums from my parent's childhoods, all glued in place with black corner holders and dates written underneath in white pencil.

I will probably weed through them all and liberate most from the herd. I'll scan them to save them and then comes my issue. How do I get rid of them? Do I have a bon fire? throw them in with the kitchen trash? bury them in shreds, I really don't know. Do spirits live with photos as many people think or are the memories so real that we feel the person in the photo? 

This is a real question: what do you do with old photos?