Family Heirlooms

Facebook.com has been an interesting, getting reacquainted time for me and friends and family. This particular post doesn't really have to do with growing up in Runnemede, but maybe it does. One of my newly reacquainted friends game me a list of questions to answer about the family and since most of the questions are really better handled in The Fat Lady Singeth, I'll answer them on that BLOG, but the question of "What about your family heirlooms, are there any?" has been talked about before but I'll try to add more to it here.

My family -- that means my mom's and dad's family, their offspring, and their offspring are mostly, really into family heirlooms, even now to the point of another group of offpsring -- my grandchildren. (If you're wondering why I didn't make offspring plural by adding an "s", I'm thinking that the word offspring is all encompassing and is already plural, like the word children. If someone would like to chime in on that I'd appreciate it.)

We are fortunate in our family to have many heirlooms, and I think the favorites for me are the picture albums -- there were several. Since my father's uncle was a picture framer/photographer that generation's photos were mostly framed. And, yes, we (meaning me, my offspring, my sister and brother) have those framed photos around our various residences. There were also family photo albums, several, containing pictures going back to the 1850s. Most are well-documented, which is also a help.

My daughter and I have rebooked the set of old albums I inherited -- I didn't take them all. When my mom died, she had at least four albums of her life from the time she was little, until the times of her children's growing up. So, we each took one of those books. And when dad packed up to move to North Carolina, I took my share of albums. And in the past few years I've been very busy at Staples copying those pictures on a color copier, which gives me the same hues as the originals.

So, when I visited my brother a couple of years ago, I swiped HIS album and went to Staples with it, and made copies of all those pictures. And when I visited my sister, we went through a couple of albums and then another trip to Staples. When I visited my cousin Betty, in Tennessee, another trip to Staples. A visit to my cousin Micki in Florida, another trip to Staples (which was a disaster).

So, you see we have tried to keep everyone in the loop with the family pictures. And while my father's family pictures go back to the 1850s, my mom's family immigrated to the USA in 1906 and so that begins any pictures we have of her family. I suppose they either didn't take any pictures in Italy, or they left them there.

So, family members, if you have pictures that you think I don't have, or should have, scan them in and send them over. I'll not only copy them and send them to family members that don't have computers (there are still a few), or I'll make sure everyone who has a computer gets a copy.

I'm particularly interested in getting some wedding photos of your parents and you. I have special ways I keep those photos preserved. School pictures? Hanging around the house pictures? Any pictures at all, either in color or black and white. It makes no difference.

The Drexler-Sbaraglia-Evangelista brood is scrapbooked currently, in four albums. Since I've met up with so many of my cousins, I started a separate album with NEW pictures. The pictures of us all grown up and aged. It's an interesting journey, and I've loved doing it.

So, while this just touches on family heirlooms, I guess I'll have to end this epistle with MTF.