Who are these people?

Your guess is as good as mine. Like so many old family photographs this one is a mystery. No one living in our family remembers the couple in this photo. No one wrote on the back.  My grandfather left many photos of mystery ancestors. As a child I liked to make up stories for the people in the pictures. I still do. Perhaps they married young with high hopes. Maybe they moved North into Canada like my great grandparents in search of land they could afford to buy and start a farm of their own. Maybe he was a banker and she a milliner. Maybe they had 3 children. Maybe they endured the heartache of losing a child much too soon to a childhood disease that nobody dies of anymore. Maybe they loved each other through the good and the bad times, sunny days and rainy. Maybe when he died she missed him terribly and when she died she was missed terribly by their children. Maybe, just maybe...

On becoming a family of Druids

When my grandmother passed away we planted a tree in her honor. It was a weeping willow. It died. I don't think Grandma Dorothy wanted to be a sad tree. When my grandfather passed away we planted a tree in his honor and another one just like it to replace the Grandma Dorothy tree that died. Sweet gum trees picked out with loving care by my son, Anders. They grow side by side in front of our house next to the driveway.

After we planted these rather expensive memorial trees, my father announced that when he died we were not to buy a X*&^%$ expensive tree to remember him by. He said he had already planted a perfectly good tulip poplar tree next to the driveway and that would be his tree. That was in June. He passed away unexpectedly in November.

After much contemplation, planning and hard work my youngest brother and his wife built a memorial bench with the bronze plaque the military sent mounted under the seat. We put it under Dad's tulip poplar tree.

We've planted rose bushes to each side of the tree. Dad loved roses. Mom and I often rest there when we are out gardening or going out for the mail. It's shady with a nice breeze.

One day  Mom and I had stopped to rest on the bench. I got to thinking about the memorial trees and started to smile.

"Mom, I think we're becoming a family of Druids"
"What?" she asked looking puzzled.
"Look down this drive. When our family members die we 'become' trees!" I replied. "So what sort of tree do you want to be? A river birch, a fir, maybe a Linden tree..."

Mom thought for a moment then answered seriously,"I think I'll join your dad and be a tulip poplar."

I wiped a little tear from my eye.

I won't forget.

A labor of love or temporary insanity

It all started when I inherited my grandmother's recipe box. I started thinking about all the stories she had told me about her childhood. I wished I had thought to record her words before Alzheimer's took her memories. I thought about how those stories would soon be lost if no one wrote them down. I though about my grandfather and the cracked nursery rhymes he taught us when we were little. About my dad telling his three littlest grandsons the story of the "3 Billy Goats Gruff".

It made me sad to think that all these stories were lost when they passed away. So here I am trying in my own inept way to record these family memories to pass on to my children and my grandchildren and hopefully all the generations to come.

Don't ask me who said it but someone once said, "You can't know where you are going if you don't know where you've been."

I invite you to join me as I explore where we've been.