So I briefly visited my grandmother’s house today.  For those of you on that train, this is Edgar’s house in SWAN.  So I took some photos, but it is A Hot Mess because we are in the process of just tearing stuff apart and I’m considering waiting until more is cleared out both so that the view is better and so I’m not showing my grandmother in any kind of bad light, even if the mess is not her fault by any means.  My grandmother is not dead, but is in a care facility and hasn’t been in her home for two years and the funds from the sale of her house and other antiques will be helping to pay for her care.  

I went solely looking for a spoon with Mickey Mouse on it that I had used when I stayed there on the weekends when I was around six years old.  (I had remembered it wrong and it was Minnie Mouse?  My memory is still clearly seeing Mickey despite being confronted with Minnie, so maybe there was a set, but whatever, I got the spoon.)  

But I also asked what would happen to her photo albums, and no one knew or really wanted them and, dammit, I wanted them.  I kind of wanted to digitize them if nothing else.  I feel like a lot of this stuff was hidden from me as a kid for some reason and I was kind of eager to just grab everything and see these people.  My first acquisition was a photo of a lady named Tressie from 1911 that was framed by itself and just chilling on a desk, and honestly, this is the first time I’ve seen someone from that long ago I knew (from subsequent digging in photos) was even tangentially related to me.   I think she’s like, my grandmother’s aunt at the very closest, but it is wild to look at her face and her old dress and think, ‘I share a thread with this person.’  

My grandfather was adopted, so a lot before him just stops.  We have limited info about his birth father, apparently, but before my grandfather died, he went a little wild for genealogy and such, so I think I would like to have whatever work he did.  

But I have my grandmother’s wedding photo and dozens of people who I then have obituaries on in the same album.  I’ll have to show you guys a picture of my grandmother from when she was about my age - we have the same taste in glasses.  

I also accidentally picked up my dad’s baby book because it was photo album shaped and the cover was covered in aluminum foil (?????) and am now in a very uncomfortable position of seeing all this cutesy kind of kid stuff that I know is all about a person who grew up to treat me very badly.   It also includes one of his baby teeth.  

So there’s that.