Nostalgia

One thing I learned about my mother-in-law while in Florida is that she kept every single picture anyone ever mailed or e-mailed her! A lot of them were framed and displayed beautifully. I spent a lot of time looking through picture albums from the time my father and mother-in-law dated up until recent photos. We even got to watch a VIDEO (made from old film) of Mitch's parents wedding from 1960!

The greatest find for me, though, were the oodles of baby pictures of Sarah. I am fairly diligent about keeping albums for and of the kids. I make sure to make duplicate copies of scrapbooks or photo books so that everyone will get one when they grow up and move out. I have always felt bad that Sarah wouldn't have a baby book that I put together for her (she always asks to see hers when we look at Ella's). We had a few baby pictures, but mostly wallets of studio portraits. Now I have enough to make a good scrapbook for her along the lines of what the other two (will) have.

I also found pictures of Sarah's mom and dad's wedding(s) (there were two weddings -- it's a long story)and even some from when they were dating. I will admit that it was really, really weird to see wedding pictures of your husband getting married to someone else. After some internal debate, I shared them with Sarah and she was delighted to see them. I asked her if it was weird seeing her mom and dad getting married, but she said no and asked to see the whole album! In the book Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce the author recalled a time in college daydreaming about her future wedding. She pictured her with her mom and dad together on her wedding and she realized that she hadn't thought of the three of them together ever (it brought her to tears). That really struck me as very sad and I am determined that Sarah not have that experience. I hope she has memories and photos of her and her mom and dad together post-divorce -- even if it is infrequent. I am adding the wedding photos to her baby scrapbook so that she'll have photos of them together. She can decide when she is older if she wants to hold on to them or not. Even if it wasn't "happily ever after" it is still where she began and I think she deserves the right to those memories.