About a Girl

I'm starting to feel like the narrator from About A Boy. My day is also beginning to be divided up into units that seem to repeat themselves, although mine have a tendency to be lengthier than his. As a shout out to one of my favorite writers, here is my day, or some of it, in units:

• Wake up, 1 unit
• Let the dog out; make coffee; unload the dishwasher, 1 unit
• Drink coffee; plead with the dog to be quiet while the Crimefighter (who actually goes to work these days rather than working from home) catches the end of his slumber, 1 unit
• Walk the dog, 2 units
• Feed the dog; Load the dishwasher; clean up the kitchen from the night before, 1 unit
• Check email; kick ass in mafia wars; general computer assing around, 2 units
• Check in with my summer school class; grade papers; send emails asking where the papers due last week are, 4 units (only 6 students in this class)
• Read in a thoroughly useless but fun book, 1 unit
• Scan next set of family photos, 4 units
• Dedicated cuddle my cat time, 1 unit
• Read another chapter in useless book, 1 unit
• Something domestic, 1 unit
• Break for lunch

Most of this is self-explanatory, and I'm doing much better now that I've tried to carve some semblance of a structure into my day. My house even looks better now that I've decided to do something but not everything every day. Most of what's left to be done requires some assistance from the Crimefighter before I can get to it anyway, so I feel kind of off the hook.

Scanning pictures seems to be the most interesting thing I'm doing these days. Several years ago, my Dad and Uncle decided to rent out my grandparents' house after my grandfather passed away and my grandmother, who has since passed away, moved permanently into a retirement home. It was kind of a funny experience that highlights my dad's family quite well. They had to force me to take the small television, because no one really wanted it, but all the grandchildren went 20 rounds over the paper turkey my grandmother used to put on the table every Thanksgiving. There was a lot of nice stuff in the old house, but my prized possession was the old wooden board my grandmother used to have with her at all times. One side for baking and the other for playing solitaire or doing the daily crossword puzzle (which she finished every day well into her 70s).

Although my grandparents were not very sentimental people on the surface, I'm starting to realize they may have been a little more so than they appeared. I was shocked to discover just how well documented my father's family is, at least in photographs. When we cleaned out the house, I took all of the family photos and promised to put them together in some sort of order.

Yes, that was years ago.

I did actually do SOMETHING with some of them. My dad's people were farmers right up until, well, my Dad. This means that there are some very interesting pictures of a new England farm (and my family with all the animals you might find on a New England dairy farm) spanning, literally, generations. It all started with a hilarious picture of my great great grandfather standing in a suit, chomping a cigar, and watching a horse drink water. Somewhere in that image, an idea began forming.

My sister is a veterinarian. I've mentioned before that this is something she always knew. I don't remember her ever wanting to be anything else, except for that brief summer she discovered hot rollers and wanted to be a cosmetician. After seeing that picture of my father's great grandfather, I began to think that maybe having love for animals in her blood wasn't altogether that strange.

I went through the photos and found 6 generations of Richards (from that original photo through my sister's kids) all surrounded by various animals. This was pre-llama, so the pets don't range to the exotic or semi-exotic, but I bought one of those pre-made collages and filled it with these photos for a Christmas gift for her. I thought it would look good on her office wall, sort of make her look bona fide or something. I even went through old photos of my mom's side of the family. They aren't as multi generational, but while the love for animals doesn't span so long, it is no less intense. Let's just say I'm glad there was never a situation where my Mother's father had to choose whether to save his dog Heidi or me from a burning building.

The grouped photos were meant to be something to hang in her office. I swear I didn't mean to make her cry on Christmas morning. I can't tell you how much it pleases me that those two photo groupings hang on her wall in places of importance. They even survived her move to Virginia and found a place on her new walls.

When I discovered that I would have much time and little money this summer, I dusted off all those boxes of photos (I did at least store them well) and decided to do something about them. So, for the past weeks, since Mount Ida let out, I've been scanning not just the pet photos but all of my family history. I'm almost through the Richard side, and hope to be done with both sides of the family before the leaves change. My eventual plan is to burn multiple copies of DVDs and give them to everyone for Christmas.

Somewhere around photo 200, I realized something. No one is going to appreciate it. None of them will do more than, MAYBE, look through them once. They will grasp the amount of time it took to gather them and transfer them to electronic format, and they will say thank you, but they will all, somewhere in their hearts, consider it a colossal waste of time and one of those things that Suzy places too much importance on. A frivolous thing, really, and not at all important.

Around photo 250, I realized it didn't matter. This was when I started to realize that it would be their loss. There's nothing I can do about that. Let them eat cake; I'm enjoying learning what was never spoken of in my family.

To sum up my families: Richards don't fight. Cables fight about everything, none of it of substance. Richards don't really talk. Cables snipe and gossip. Richards don't complain if their legs fall off. Cables blame others for a hangnail.

It's not really that bad, but sometimes it seems so. I grew up knowing there was nothing that was going to make the Richards get outwardly angry with me, but there was nothing that was going to make them more gregarious with me either. Spartan stoicism through and through. I also grew up knowing that, at some point, I would be an outcast among the Cables, but it didn't really matter because we were all a round robin of whipping boys, and the scorn passed to another if you just kept your head down and did nothing.

These photos are telling me I might have had it all wrong. I haven't gotten to the Cable photos yet, but I'm hoping to find a similar situation there. Here's what I've learned about my Father's family through photos:

• They were not poor. I grew up hearing stories about tough times, but even Depression era pictures show my Dad in new and fashionable clothes. No one was fat, but no one grew leaner either, probably caused by self-supporting and back breaking farm work and a lack of knowledge about the existence of the stock market.
• They were joyful. I never thought of my Dad's family as ever having fun, but they really did. While I might find pictures of my Dad's father and mother behind the King and Queen Neptune facades at a cheesy tourist spot in Florida mildly disturbing, they truly seem to be having a ball. That's not something I ever saw all that often.
• My grandparents were in love with each other. I met them when they were already an old bickering married couple. Other family members often claim that my grandfather was an ass to my grandmother all the time. Still, pictures on their wedding day show two people giddy in love with each other. Crusty old Swedes are not actors. They couldn't have been faking it. They were gone over each other.
• They were a tight and loving extended family. My grandmother remained incredibly close to her sister and brothers throughout their lives. I see them grow up and grow old, always together. My grandfather always lived within a mile of his siblings. I love my sister and her family, but I'm not sure we could live in peace that close for that long.

It's hard sometimes to remember that we meet our grandparents when they have already lived an awful lot of life. Douglas Coupland once said something about our parents living entire lives without us. It's hard, he says, to imagine our mothers smiling in the arms of a man who isn't our father. Same goes for our grandparents; something I'm just now learning. But it is true, and somehow I find comfort in it.

So, if no one appreciates the hours I put in and doesn't care to look at the product, that will be OK. For now, I'm enjoying my mornings with coffee getting to know some really interesting people who lived and loved long before I.