Today, after work, hubby picked up a box of pictures from his brother. You know, for the reunion stuff. Ahhh to explain it. The box made me want to cry. It was a half crushed shoe box. The majority of the pictures in it were curved and not flat. Half aren't in the best of conditions. So glad I have a 1200dpi scanner. I made those puppies better than they were and in even bigger size. In this box of pictures was hidden treasure. Pictures of his mom. He doesn't have many of those, he only had one after his dad died and his stepmom was having the kids pick out the pictures they wanted. Being the baby of the family there usually isn't much left. Especially with 6 children all older than you. His parents were divorced when he was 9. Before then he was pretty much raised by his 4 older brothers. To give a picture of the age difference, his four older brothers are a year apart in age. The oldest turned 50 this year. Hubby is 37. This is why his oldest brother says he never wants children. He already raised the last 3. Especially hubby. Anyway, hubby's mom died 'on the table' after going in for a histerectomy when he was 18. He lived with his dad after the divorce. So he doesn't have all that much of her. He visited for a week each summer. Not sure really whose choice that was. Mostly his, I think, he had cousins in the area he visited too. So we open up this box. Pictures in sad shape. There were several pictures of his mom when she was younger. His grandmother too, she is also dead, I never met her either. There were pictures of his dad, younger, too. We lost him last May. There were group pictures of the kids. He is in none of them. There's even one with the other 2 besides the 4. I don't really know why he was crying, going through them. Could be cuz he finally had pics of his mom, I could copy and print. Could be because he wasn't in them. Who knows. His brother said it wasn't the right box, he couldn't find that one. Hopefully he'll look for it. It'd be very sad if we can't find pics of him.
There was something else in there. Hubby is slightly dyslexic. I knew before he told me. When someone switches numbers around like nobody's business when reading right in front of you, there's something to it. So...looking at old report cards. Not all the brothers' were in there, but the ones that were, showed signs of the same problems he had/has. Reading orally, comprehensively, spelling. Incomplete homework in 4th grade. One of them had less than a 50% rate of completing work. The signs were there, just unnoticed. Dyslexia was only recently recognized. It was new when I was in high school. Well, atleast in my area. So, seeing those, he starts talking about needing to work with Mikel, so that we can make sure he doesn't have it. Talked him out of that one. It's really too young to tell. Kids don't start falling behind until around 2nd grade, but they learn to cope. Until about 5th or 6th grade and their coping skills just can't keep up with more work, new words, etc. I tell ya, there were F's and I- and M- throughout those cards. There were no better grades than that. At first, it shocked me. If I had brought home a report card that had any one of those grades on it, I'd a been beat and never left the damn house. Of course, I could do better than that, so it was expected of me to do so. The patterns in those report cards shocked me. Those are the basic concepts of everything they teach you later on.
Anyway, lost my train of thought so...off to try to sleep. More scanning tomorrow! That and trying to flatten and preserve those pictures. Picked up some photo album pages so they wouldn't sit in a starting to mold box and detiorate more than they already are. Such a shame they were treated that way. Pictures seem to be our most precious memories. Especially of those who are no longer with us. Pictures do not ever belong in shoe boxes! |