My mother, Anne Freeman Robertson née Johansen, was the communicator in our immediate family. She wrote to relatives and friends all over the world, keeping the lines open. She passed away in 2011, at the age of 91 and 9 months. So the lines are starting to close now because my generation doesn't know those people, and we have nothing to say to them. Mum had her memories of them from her younger years, and the continuity of a shared history. She shredded all of her correspondence in the last few years of her life. I'm not sure why, but she got it into her head that this was private and should not "get out." Out where, I'm not sure. I could understand her shredding addresses, but she also did the letters themselves.
My brother, Jim, also likes to write letters rather than sending emails. It is becoming a lost art. I type faster than I write, so email is much easier for me.
Anyway, I inherited all of the family photos and all of the hundreds of slides she took over the years. I actually asked for them with the idea of scanning everything and sharing with the rest of the family on DVD. It has taken 2 years, but I'm finally starting the process. It is daunting, to say the least.
Here is a picture of the stack of photographs and slides I'm going through:
Photographs go back to my mother's childhood from the 1900's. I will not be posting in order, but as I find them, and if I think they are interesting. The slides started after we came to Canada in the early 1950's. There are many that I will not even be keeping, either because they are fuzzy, duplicates, or places and people I can't identify.
Mum was very much involved with the community of the village we lived in, Hemmingford, being part of the Women's Institute, the Church, played bridge once a week, belonged to a quilting group, etc. When we first moved to H'ford, she also was called upon to help because of her nursing background. Sitting with someone over night, for instance. She was also part of a volunteer group for a while that kept a watch on the seniors in the community who were living alone. Someone would call the people on their list and a pre-determined time, and if they didn't answer, someone would be sent out to their house to see if they were okay. This was before "Life Line" and similar companies had electronic systems in place for seniors on their own. In a rural community, unless you have family close by who can check on an elderly relative, a person who falls, or has any kind of medical issue where they can't call for help, can be very serious.
Mum fell in love with quilting in the 70's and it really became a passion with her. She was quilting right up until she fell, broke her hip, and ended up in the hospital in 2010.
I think this is a picture of the first quilt she ever worked on, but I'm not sure. She gave me it to me years later, when I had finally gotten a permanent job and a nice apartment, and had stopped flitting around the country.
The quilt is an appliquéd style, not pieced. The patterned blocks are the LeMoyne Star I think. It has a real cotton batting in it, not the more modern polyester one, so it is a real pain to wash. It weighs a ton when wet and takes forever to dry. It can't be put in the dryer because the centrifugal force in the dryer would make the batting ball up in between the stitching. I don't use it often because of that.
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