It’s spring again, and I thought I’d kick it off with some vintage green.
Among the vintage documents peeks out the grassy-shaded WWII postage stamp on an envelope my grandmother sent to Dad while he served in the Army Air Corps.
The background photograph, featuring one of my maternal grandmothers (why I have more than one is a story for another day) was taken as a black and white picture in the 1930s – though it was somehow colorized to give the ivy leaves surrounding her that greenish hue and the rosy pink of an authentic Victorian dress she most likely found in her own attic.
Born in 1885, Grandma Helen taught Greek Mythology at Hardin Simmons and was a state historian for the DAR. She drug my mom on long road trips during the depression years to interview far flung cousins and neighbors of long dead ancestors in the quest to complete her genealogy scrolls – and I mean scrolls: long, long rolls of charts of the family tree.
She cherished anything old, and this is only one of several photos I have of her dressed up in her attic finds.
Strumming his guitar, the German figure of a boy missing his hand came from my other (paternal) grandmother – the only grandparent I actually knew. He stood on a glass shelf over the sink of her gleaming 1940s kitchen, one of her few knick-knacky things I was tall enough to see back before I had reached the age of seven, which was about when she died.
Perched on the papers is Mr. Frog, a treasured gift, sculptured and glazed by the giver: our youngest son years ago.
The foreground documents include my grandfather’s Certificate of Ordination of 1903, which was handwritten, and a letter from one of the colleges he attended, dated 1874.
Wow! Sounds like I must be old. Well, these grandparents adopted my mother when they were already an older couple. But even with that I am sadly no spring chicken.