Discoveries from the Archive

I've written about the comprehensive and always expanding Oliver/Kollatz archive before... but don't think I've expressed the wonders of its mysteries. It has fed my art and research, my husband's writing and now, during the first days of spring, a strong sense of sentimentality. Somehow I've managed to live these many years in places that span the nation and the globe without ever getting rid of the many things that so many people toss away without a thought. Really! It amazes me what people throw away. I DO love purging and tossing things that have lived a full life (like the fridge we inherited five years ago that has finally bitten the dust.)

In an attempt at a spring purge I unearthed a stash of my favorite photos of all time - images that I hold dear to my heart. I am SO HAPPY to have found them and to be able to share them with my family and friends in this way. Most of the selection above is from a collection of square photos taken when I was twelve and my favorite cousins and their mom visited us. They traveled from Germany to see us so it was a very celebratory time whenever we had the chance to visit. The one in the top left corner was of the three of them taken in front of our family home. The top middle and bottom left and right images were taken at Grenada Lake. The top right photo was taken at a party celebrating my brother's pending marriage and the bottom middle photo is of my best friend from highschool (the one with attitude) during her freshman year at a private college in the south. They looked like preppie girls but believe me, they weren't!

I'm struck by how much my 17 year old niece looks like my cousin depicted in these photos. If only we could all spend another afternoon together on that lake or another like it. We are long overdue a sweet afternoon in the sun.

The photo on the far left is of my other cousin Ruth Marie and her new husband flying off into the sunset for their honeymoon. That's a wedding I regret missing. This is the only one in this series where I wasn't present to witness the actual event. The middle photo on the top of Di and I at breakfast in the house I grew up in. The one on the top right is of her and her little brother Eugene. The one above was accidentally cropped. The photo on the bottom left is of my mother with me in her arms. I think she was 22 years old and a senior at the university. The middle bottom photo is of the same two German cousins depicted above on the right - all that great Grenada Lake. The photo on the bottom right is of one of those rare occassions when Oliver's come home to Mississippi. My great uncle and his wife visited the same farm he grew up on, the same expansive farm my Uncle Bobby continues to work... so my father's brother, his son and then my grandfather's brother and his wife are in the bottom right photo. A number of the people depicted in these photos are no longer around for us to share these photos with - another reason I'm happy to have fished them out of the archive.