Saturday, April 15, 2017

TWO CHILDREN....



When I was sifting through old photographs the other day, I was struck by the fact that I’ve got a lot of photos of children: children in sets and clusters of two, three, four and more; children sitting on front steps, at picnic tables; boys in pup tents, wearing scout uniforms; girls in rowboats wearing little white blouses and camp kerchiefs; boys AND girls posed next to their bicycles.
         
Most of those children grew up to be my grandparents or my great aunts and uncles; two of them grew up to become my parents; seven are first cousins…one of those children grew up to be me!

I digress.

This is a photo of my mother and my aunt in the front walkway of my grandparents’ first house on Kirk Street in Boston; Martha (left) and Hope  Howell (my mother is the younger). 

On the back of the photo, in my mother’s handwriting, it says “circa 1924.”

I asked her once about the date.
           “I know it was 1924 or earlier,” she said, “because my parents bought the house on Eliot Street, right near Jamaica Pond, in 1925—this is definitely the Kirk Street house.”

She remembered clearly the trellis for the roses, the wooden steps, the big rhododendron; she remembered being told to hold Hope’s hand in a gesture of sibling companionship.


“I was mad about that,” she told me, grinning. “I wanted to be on my own.”

15 comments:

  1. Actually, neither girl looks like they want to be holding the other's hand. How funny. They've probably had a good laugh about that over the years. A fun photo because of both of their expressions. You do kind of have to wonder what was going on there. :)

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    1. My aunt Hope was five years older than my mother...so the spread was significant until they were in their twenties...and, yes, they did laugh about it!

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  2. Ah yes - posing for photos - I loathed it and my mother was a keen amateur photographer. Being an only child I was often the subject/victim. I found it tedious in the extreme. Now of course, I am grateful.

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    1. Funny you should say that, Alex; my parents didn't take a lot of photos, and now I wish they had!

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  3. Yes, the photographer gets to tell people what to do for that one second of time...and then they go back to living their own lives! But it's cute anyway!

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    1. I've always preferred totally candid shots...that way, you get people as they actually were, rather than the photographer's ideal of them!

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  4. I guess the sisters wwre not in the mood to be pushed together for a photograph, but still it is a nice shot. Good of you to restrict yourself to one photograph out of many, unlike me!

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    1. I've got one of them sitting together on a sofa when they were both in their 80s...seeing the two photos side by side is pretty amazing. (I should post those, right?)

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  5. You Both Look Ready To Run Out Of Shot! Tho,Great Photo None The Less!

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    1. You're right, Tony -- both look very uncomfortable. Maybe that's why I don't have many photos of them as kids...

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  6. Lovely post for Easter, looking back at even the simplest of moments in our lives brings that moment, our feeling and the joy with those we shared them with so much closer to us!

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    1. Simple moments are, I agree, the best. There's something unrehearsed and innocent about them. Thanks for your comment, Karen...

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  7. How funny that you remember wanting to be on your own. I was the opposite driving my sister crazy shadowing her everywhere. Isn't it amazing how many memories are stirred when we really look at these photos.

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    1. And oftentimes, Helen, those memories are different for everybody in the photo--put four siblings in a room and ask them about a photo; they will all have different perspectives of the same event!

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