Memories...like the corners of my mind

So the whole facebook thing has reconnected me with neighbors and high school chums and family members I haven't seen in years. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law has been converting her slides into photos on her computer. I'm next in line for the slide scanner and so today I decided to get out my slides and view them through the slide viewer I got for Christmas two years ago (back when I first wanted to convert my slides). The job is a tough one.

After my Dad died, my mother had a moment of wanting to clear out the entire house to get ready to sell it. I got the job of going through the photos and the slides. It was a haphazard, quick, hold-the-slides-to-the-light kind of job, and because I couldn't take the many boxes the slides were somewhat organized in back on the plane to return home, I put them in slide boxes and bags. I tossed out quite a few slides of my father's business trips and people I didn't know. My brother didn't want any of the slides of him, but I kept them anyway thinking that he might regret that decision down the road. Or at least his children might. I think I envisioned all of us gathered around a darkened living room viewing the slides on the wall like we use to do when I was a child. The fact that I couldn't haul home the projector and screen was a problem I figured I'd worry about later.

So today I'm going through these boxes of slides viewing them one by one. The memories that they are invoking are incredible. I ran across a picture of my grandparents and my brother and me, and next to my grandfather is one of those ashtrays on a pedestal that I suddenly remembered from my childhood. The ashtray stood upright next to a chair or couch in my grandparents' house. It had a curved handle so that you could lift it and move it and it had a little button that you could push to dump the ashes into a pot. I can remember my brother and I playing with that ashtray when people weren't around. We would push the button and watch the ashes disappear. I wouldn't have thought of that in a million years if I hadn't seen the photo. Also in the photo is a Dutch Masters cigar box in my brother's lap. One of the many "toys" we grew up with.

Pictures of snowmen remind me that my father was the one who took us out each winter and created snowmen with us complete with spray paint for the eyes and nose. Pictures of my mother teaching us Chinese Checkers brings back the secret family move we learned. There are Christmas photos with all of our toys lined up next to us, birthday photos with our friends and cakes, vacation photos from our trip out west, to Florida, to our trip down Blue River, house photos from all the homes I lived in from Pennsylvania to North Carolina to Indiana, and plenty of family pictures with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even my great grandmother.

I realize that I'm going to have a job trying to get the years and locations correct when I do get around to converting these slides to digital. I'm also going to have to have help pinpointing all of that. But I think that the job will be a worthwhile one and that after I'm finished I will have most of my Christmas shopping finished!