Memories serve as entertainment, sometimes. Maybe sentiment is a better word than entertainment. I've spent time watching old home videos and looking through photo albums, as other people have, for entertainment...but what about when we look through others' photos? Others' memories (if that's what that is)?
My grandfather and step-grandmother on my dad's side (Grandpa and Grandma Linda, respectively) live in a colonial era house on the Chester River in Chestertown, MD. When we saw them for Christmas this year, we left with a box of mementos from my somewhat recently deceased great-grandmother, "Binnie."
(She died three years ago, at age 102. Her house is right across the street from Grandpa's in Chestertown. Some things people call "timeless" - I would call Binnie "timefull." She had a beautiful smile, as well as a manic little pug named Mac - she had many dogs in her life, but this one I knew - who had an impressive wardrobe complete with a matching raincoat and rain hat. He was a real licker.)
Most of the box's contents were old photographs. It's been fun picking out her and other remembered family members and friends in the pictures (though that's mainly the task of my father, as I don't recognize those people). They are both strange and familiar - do I imagine it to be so?
There was also a signed, framed picture of Dwight D. Eisenhower! An old friend of the USA, I guess you could say. Haven't dug into the background on that one yet. The picture is an intersection of familial and collective memory - a mandorla-like artifact. And now it is a piece of my personal memory.
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