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Daily Mantra: “The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.”
{anais.nin}
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I can still smell them. Little pillows of doughy goodness rising triumphantly in the old, log fueled cook stove. A small billow of smoke rolled out from the back…a reminder of the last pie baked. I was four, and although any detail of what I did last week {or an hour ago} is difficult to muster, the memory or my great grandma baking biscuits is clear. I would sit on the unfinished hardwood floor and wait impatiently in front of the stove as they cooked; my grandmother and her would sip freshly perked coffee and talk about the kind nothingness that mattered.
“Don’t sit to close, deary…you don’t want them eyebrows comin’ off”, she would say in her coastal Maine, daringly harsh dialect. I would back up at first, but inch closer when they wern’t looking.
A pile of Courier Gazette newspapers sat in the corner in a disorganized pile; a collection of pictured time, she would call them.
My grandmother would call them a cluttered fire hazard and role her eyes.
She shuffled across the splintered floors in her worn soled slippers, and shewed me back with an ugly crocheted potholder. A half grin came across her face {the Irish woman never really smiled} as she grasped the cast iron from the hot stove and placed it on the burner to cool.
Sometimes I find myself desperately wondering if I am giving my girls these perfect morsels of childhood memories. I wonder if my parents, or my grandparents worried too.
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Your words are so eloquent and your pictures are so beautiful. love that second shot!
Oh what beautiful blond curls!!! and how great to journal about your childhood!!
This is SO beautiful Mandy… it brings wistful tears to my eyes remembering my own childhood days of sitting by my granny’s iron stove waiting on the cookies to be done (she made the BEST cookies!). I worry about this too, about giving them the “right” kind of childhood memories. But when I see their faces while we are doing one of our quirky “family traditions”, I know that even though they won’t have the same childhoods I did, theirs will be amazing just the same, and one day they will do these things with their own children and I can sit in my rocker and smile about “the good old days”.
Wonderful photos…I often wonder the same thing…with childhood memories!
Cari
I LOVE the way you write. I can picture you sitting there waiting for the biscuits. And your photographs are beautiful as always. I am sure you are giving your girls tons of precious memories!
All three these are just GORGEOUS!!!
I love the first one, it makes me want to snuggle in bed with my kiddos.
So very beautiful.~Jackie
Mandy, if you have a scrapbook with photos of your grandma, I hope you print your journaling out and preserve it for your children! Beautiful words, and beautiful photos of the most delightful blue eyes and curls ever.
What a wonderful post! I’m not sure our parents and grandparents worried about that so much. So many other things to worry about. And they were doing what they were taught to do. We have so many options and choices for child development that we sometimes forget to listen to our guts and hearts.
Looking at your beautiful daughters, I’d say your are doing a perfect job. Happy kids just don’t look so good in photos.
I love your captures for today. They remind me of years ago when I could hug and hold my oh so soft and cuddly toddlers.
Fabulous pictures and touching sentiments!
These are absolutely precious.
You need to write a novel! Your writing style is so inviting!! I felt like I was right there with you!! Such precious memories…and as always beautiful, artistic images!!
Beautiful pictures and beautiful memories you shared!
You are giving them memories, not the same as your grandmother, but ones they’ll be nostalgic about when they look at their own children. I just love Katie’s sly looks and those perfect curls.
Can you believe I do all that Halloween decorating just for myself? We get virtually no trick or treaters out here.
What a great memory. I am sure they worried about the life they were giving us only on a different level. Your dd is sooooo adorable.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again….you tell the BEST stories! Love your pictures too:)
This is just beautiful, and I think you are giving your children many beautifully perfect memories like these. Katie is such apretty girl, she just looks like an angel.
She looks like a dream on a cloud in that first shot and just plain adorable in all three!
Lovely shot