Grandpa Green

My father-in-law recently passed on a bunch of family pictures that had been saved on a CD.  So I spent an afternoon scrolling through them and watching the history of my husband's family unfold.  There was his great grandmother as a young woman at the turn of the century, his 95 year old grandma as a plump baby.  The pictures changed from black and white to the washed out colors of the 50's and 60's.  I watched as toddlers grew to adolescents and long-limbed gawky teenagers became brides and grooms.  Then my husband and his brother appeared as bowl-haired towheads, and my mother-in law was so young and pretty. 

The family business celebrated 50 years, there were grandchildren, then great-grandchildren, and faces who disappeared from the pictures all together.  Eventually my skinny 20 year old self appeared with baby Madeleine next to that young blue-eyed man I fell in love with.  I could look at these pictures a dozen times a day and lose myself in the stories and nostalgia, the history of a family that I am now a part of and that my children are tied to.  I can't help but think of our own family photographs- Disney World, birthday parties, camping trips, that will continue this line of snapshots for the children's children and so on and so on...

Grandpa Green

Jane Smith 2011

In Grandpa Green a young boy relates the memories his grandfather tells him.  The images are cleverly related in the topiary.  It's one of those books (like Someday and Roxaboxen) that clutch my heart.