I visited my parents over Christmas, and one day I walked past a picture in their home of my maternal grandfather (the grandfather who took many of the pictures I’ve featured on this blog). As a child, I thought of my grandfather as an old man. I saw him as […]
Continue readingTag Archives: grandfather
Playing Santa with Grandpa and Barbie
Only my father-in-law and I were at my in-laws’ house late on Christmas Eve 1984. All the Methodists in the family except Grandpa had gone to their midnight service, which began at 10:30pm. Early to bed, those Methodists. The three grandchildren – my nephew, niece, and son – were nestled […]
Continue readingGrandpa and the Grandchildren’s Gallery
This past weekend we buried my father-in-law. He was the first grandparent my children and their cousins lost. As the family mourned, of course, we told our stories. The four cousins – my son and daughter, and my nephew and niece – were close in age, born between 1978 and […]
Continue readingExercise Your Right To Vote
Before my maternal grandfather, a taciturn businessman from Oregon, married my grandmother, he allegedly told her, “I don’t care if you’re Catholic, but you’d better vote Republican.” I don’t know if the story is true, and I don’t know how my grandmother voted. After all, she gave my mother the […]
Continue readingFamily Pictures: Capturing History As the Mind Cannot
Both my dad and my mother’s father took lots of pictures over the years. As kids, my siblings and I were always smiling at the camera for my father or grandfather, and often both of them at the same time until my grandfather died. There were four standard poses for […]
Continue reading