Even though we’ve lived in this apartment 2.5 years, we still have too much stuff. Our spare bedroom has boxes on the floor because the closet is filled. So this week I went on a campaign to go through two closets and get rid of stuff we don’t need.
Photos hogged several shelves. Many of the photos were in albums and scrapbooks. My 16” X 12” wedding album, had 8X10 pics matted and encased in plastic sleeves. I saved only ½ of them. After almost 60 years I didn’t need pictures of me throwing the bouquet, signing the wedding license, or a shot of the backsides of the wedding party at the altar. I removed the saved pics from the sleeves and matting. A huge space reduction.
Another album, a scrapbook of my 35 years at Amoco, had memories of colleagues, events, and two pages showing the construction of the Standard Oil Building (now the Aon building) in 1972. I saved a only couple of pages that had special memories. I still have many of the original pictures, scanned before we moved to Florida.
Travel photos grabbed a lot of space. For example, our 1990 UK trip album had 20 pages of photos, darkened with age. I saved a few pics and pulled the rest out of the multi-pic storage sleeves, thinking I’d use the sleeves for some newer pics. It took two hours. After all that work I realized my newer pics were 4X6 and the plastic sleeves held 3X5s. Oh well.
I wondered why we took many of the pics. There were pics with me standing in front of something: the control panel of some train, a diorama of a man shoveling coal into the furnace of the Tower Bridge, and a door with a fancy doorknob. Really? There were five pages of train pictures taken at the York, England train museum (hubby is a train enthusiast). Vacation photos I’ve saved (by scanning): Sheep grazing in the field by Hadrian's wall (cute), the Coliseum cats in Rome (unexpected), and the tiger skin rug in our hotel room across from Prince Albert Hall (sad).
Many of the pics were pics of historic buildings. In Spain, I was taking pics of a fountain at the Alhambra and I asked hubby and our friends to move aside so I could get the fountain. A Spanish woman commented, “Just like Americans taking pics of buildings and not people.” Then I thought of one of my criteria in tossing photos. If I could see those buildings on the internet, I tossed the pic.
Part of one shelf contained boxes of family pics. Going through boxes of family pics can be fun and annoying at the same time. You get a glimpse of your ancestors’ lives. I discovered a 1907 family pic in a box of pics from my distant 2nd cousin. It had three generations of my grandmother’s family. Luckily, my mother knew who all the people were. That pic always stirs sentimental feelings. It has my great-grandma and grandpa, my grandma and grandpa, and many of their children and grandchildren. I never knew my great-grandma and grandpa, nor my grandfather, but I get a glimpse of their lives. It shows my family always enjoyed family gatherings. I also have pics of that group on picnics and on bike rides (scanned of course).
The other night my friend mentioned she has an old pic of her ancestors – three somber ladies all wearing black, high-collared dresses She said, “You wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley with them.” I laughed. I told her I had a pic just like that of my GG-Grandfather’s family. I emailed my pic to her and she said it looked just like like her pic except my pic had men.
I told her I heard that people didn’t smile for pics in those days because it took so long for the camera to take the pic, but I found there were other reasons as well: customs taken from portraiture or the idea that from portraits that smiling people were drunken, crazy or immature behavior. (1) Despite their unsmiling faces, I knew great-aunt Ella, front row left, and she was actually a jolly lady.
Going through picture boxes can also be annoying because most pics are unlabeled. You don’t have a clue who is in the pic or when and where it was taken. I found a studio picture of a gentleman in hubby’s parent's picture box and assumed it was his grandfather. Hubby’s cousin set me straight. Turns out it was the president of his grandfather’s company. After 20 years of helping people trace their ancestors I preach: label your pics with dates, locations, and full names.
Digital photography changed the way we label pics. If we don’t rename the picture files, I foresee digital family albums in the future with the pic labeled IMG-7922. At least with digital technology, we’ll know the date and the location.
It seems like I spent 50-60 years of my life accumulating, now I’ll spend the next decades throwing stuff out. Most of us have faced having to purge our life’s possessions when we move to a smaller place. While it’s liberating to get rid of train pictures, I felt melancholy tossing out the pics of good times. It’s like throwing away a huge chunk of your life. I have to remember there is a difference between things and the memories they represent. I still have my memories.
Yesterday, after that purging, I heard the song Those were the days. “Those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day…” This whole experience has stirred up feelings of nostalgia, of reflection on the passage of time and the cherished memories from bygone days.
We got the news this week that in five years we’ll be moved to a different apartment and most likely won’t get the same kind of apartment we currently have. I feel like I just started building a new life here – new friends, adapting to new surroundings during the pandemic, now we’ll be ripped out and have to rebuild again. I haven’t even settled into my new life, now I have the cloud of thinking I’ll have to go through this again. Somehow I thought this would be my last home before my final years.
But then I remembered to stay positive. After a few days of mourning the loss of my past life, I’ll form a new life with new friends and experiences. Instead of losing the old, I’m building on the old. Isn’t that what resilience is, the ability to spring back from difficulties?
Those were the days' ends with “Oh my friend we’re older but no wiser, for in our hearts our dreams are still the same.” I’d like to think we are wiser. Instead of losing things, I’m building memories.
References
Jessica Grimaud, Why Didn’t People Smile in Old Photos?, Familysearch.org, October 9, 2019
Merrill Fabry, Now You Know: Why Do People Always Look So Serious in Old Photos?, Time, November 28, 2018
Oh, Sue, I haven't done the purge yet of the pictures. Maybe I'll just let my kids deal with it!!! Lynn