I was going to write about flowers and how I am constantly inspired by them, but then life happened and nostalgia hit. Nostalgia always wins. So here’s what happened…
Just a normal hot summer day in western Pennsylvania and my girls were getting tired of playing hide and seek, Memory, and dolls, so they asked if they could play on their Kindles. Before they can play on their Kindles, I always give them a list of things to do first. It usually includes a chore, something educational, and a little creative activity.
Today that list included folding 10 pieces of laundry, read or do 2 pages of math, and draw a picture of summer. Lilly likes to fold the towels (That makes her smart or lazy. I’ll go with smart.). Lucy likes to pair socks and underwear (and I thank her for that bc those are my least favorite.) Leah somehow weasels out of the laundry (I’m not going to have to work on that). Everyone chose to do worksheets instead of reading. Lilly and Lucy both drew a picture of a house covered and surrounded by flowers (and that kind of really made me happy. Houses should be surrounded by flowers and I am glad they think so too.). Leah had a melt down bc the colors she kept choosing “were not right.”
In an attempt to calm her down, we sat on the couch and started to look through the photo books. Then Maggie brought over all of the books off the end table including one entitled “America At Home” published in 2008. Tutu started looking through it and came to a picture of a familiar person and place. “This looks like that uncle. And this kind of looks like Bebe’s yard.” Yep. That is Uncle Ed pushing a 2 year-old Cole on the swing in my mom’s yard.
One fall day in 2007, all the Bruntons on the farm gathered after dinner before the milking to take a big family picture by a tractor in a field for this “book that someone was making of lots of different kinds of people who live in America.” I’m not sure if that makes us normal, special, different, or the same, but I guess it makes us a representative of rural America somehow. The photographer hung around and took pictures as the chores were being done. My sister Rachel and little cousin Cole seemed to have captured that photographer’s attention as they are in 1/2 of the pictures published in the book.
As we were looking through the two pages of my family today, Tutu pointed to the family picture and picked out a guy in a red hat, blue shirt, and jeans and said, “Hey, that’s your dad.” Yep. Sometimes I don’t feel like I talk about him much to my kids. But I guess I do enough, bc she knew who he was and that makes me happy.
In April 2008, this “America At Home” photo book was published and on April 30, 2008, my dad died in a farming accident. I remember going to Barnes & Noble before the funeral visitation to buy a copy of that book. It was also the wedding gift I gave two of my college roommates who got married that summer. Jane lives in China and she loves having a book full of America on her coffee table. She also spent a few summer days visiting me, so she has memories of the farm too. Memories during those college years are so sweet. Heather is an artist and I knew she would appreciate it. Giving that book was a way of healing for me somehow too.
We finished looking through all the pictures and I noticed the change that the farm has gone through in 12 short years. My mom has rose bushes climbing the post of the swing in her yard. Her once full and blooming garden is non-existent bc she doesn’t have the time for it and doesn’t have all those mouths to feed anymore either. The old milking barn in the background of a picture was in the process of being torn down. Everything and everyone looks a little different. I guess what they say is true. “The only thing that stays the same is that nothing stays the same.”
And that is why I take pictures. That is why I print them. That is why I make books of them. Memories and legacies.
Thanks for reading. Enjoy your day.
PS: random memory. There is a calf tied to the tree above the swing in my mom’s yard in one of those pictures. It was tied there bc the photographer wanted a cow in the family photo. It reminds me of when we were in 4-H and had just washed our calves. We would tie them outside and let them eat grass as they dried.
