Handwritten Notes

I didn’t have a planned story for this morning, so I grabbed the box of pictures and started searching for something.  I came across this picture of me in the driveway.  Originally I was going to tell the story about my two brothers teaching me how to ride a bike by pushing me down the driveway, but when I turned it over to place it on the scanner I noticed this and something else came to mind….

My mother always referred to me as “Nancy Lynn”.  Nine months old and I still didn’t have any hair!

Now, I’ve seen this picture a hundred times or more throughout my life, but I don’t ever remember seeing the note on the back of the picture.  It’s  a strange (but good) feeling to find a note from my mother who’s been passed on now for quite a few years.    This has happened to me a few times while working with these pictures.  My parents kept a pretty good record,  I have a few notes from my dad written on the back of pictures as well.

It got me thinking about the way I keep my pictures, which someday my son and his children will be rummaging through.  Right now, I put them in albums with a “note section” next to each picture.  Quite honestly, by the time my son is sitting down with his children, I’m going to have 30 albums or more, in addition to my scrapbook albums.  More than likely, he won’t have anywhere to keep all of them and they’ll end up in his attic.  I’m wondering if I should start writing on the back of the pictures and keep them in picture boxes that hold 500-1000 photographs instead of albums that only hold 200.  I’m not crazy about albums that hold 500 photos, they get ridiculously bulky.  Plus, I like to hold the picture in my hand, I don’t necessarily need to “preserve” every single photograph.  Some of my favorite photographs from my mother’s box are the faded ones with scratches and bent corners.

I like the idea of handwritten notes, even more so than digital scrapbook pages.  I know how it feels to find little surprises like this, especially when the person who wrote it has passed on, it makes the memory that much more special.   

Now as far as the note is concerned, it would seem that my mother was giving this picture to someone because she wrote, “You can keep this one.”  I guess they didn’t want it, (bwahaha!) or she never sent it, because it was still in her box of pictures!!