When I get involved with ancestry research work, time flies! I get so engrossed in names and making sure the information is correct, that an hour will go by before I know it! I’ll sit down to take a quick look and WHOOSH there goes the time!
I don’t have collections in the true sense of the word like Beanie Babies, salt and pepper shakers, or baseball cards.
My collections are:
My vast amount of family photos dating back to the late 1800s, and early 1900s on both parents’ sides of the family. Many formal portraits including families, first communions, and wedding parties. Informal photos are in photo albums and labeled with dates and locations!
My mother’s postcard collection. She had a big album with all the cards categorized by location. I hung onto it and finally took them out of the album. Someday I will write some stories about some of them.
My yarn, knitting needles, and knitting books. I have baskets of yarn and a slew of knitting books! I kept the yarns by weight in file cabinet drawers until I repurposed the file cabinet for my ancestry work. I was going to get rid of a lot of the yarn but never got around to it. I guess it’s time to put the yarn away again before any moths get to it!
Do books count? I have a lot of those and I keep buying more!
But if you’re thinking my house must be filled to the rafters, you’d be wrong! All of my “collections” are in a very large room over our garage that serves as our workout room in two-thirds of the room and my “she-space” in the remaining part. We’re lucky to have such a wonderful space!
I moved into this house in May of 1961, the month after I turned one year old. Before that, my family rented a home a few blocks from my mother’s family home.
I imagine my parents’ eyes lit up when they saw the four bedrooms and the 1/2 acre yard. The bonus was the covered porch on the side of the house and a double bonus was a next door neighbor with four children!
The porch was where we watched thunderstorms lighting up the woods across the street, where we hung out with friends, where we slept on hot summer nights only to be woken up by the sun, well past sunrise beating down on us!
I left for seven years to California and looked we looked high and low for a house just like the one I grew up in. We found one that had it’s own charm but then we had the chance to buy this one from my dad and we took it. We moved back to Connecticut 28 years ago and are still so thankful it worked out.
The side porch is still a special part of the house. It was given a facelift a few years ago, had a deck attached for the back of the house for 10 years or so, and is now a little bit larger to go with the family room added 2 years ago. During warmer weather, I sit out there with my morning coffee and newspaper. It’s the same location that my dad sat for 40 years, reading his newspaper in warm weather.
I love that this house keeps so many memories alive.
blank pages
My best ideas come to me when I’m in the shower. I know I’m not the only one who feels that way. I think they are so amazing and I cannot wait to get them out of my head and on to paper. But when I get to that paper with pen in hand – I question why ANYONE would be interested in what I have to say.
I have notebook upon notebook of ancestral information. Names, dates, and places of people I have been researching and discovering for over 20 years – not too easy when paternal grandparents have been dead since 1927 and 1935 – all ready to be written about. Yet I spend weekend organizing instead of writing.
I do what I do in every situation, I spend more time reading about something than doing it! It’s time to just put one foot in front of the other and see what comes out.
Thoughts From The Passenger Seat 