On Giants' Shoulders

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Missing Auntie

I realized today that one of the things I'm missing about Aunt Drucilla is pictures. Auntie always had her camera around at holiday time or at any other important family event. She always took pictures of us at Christmas, and pictures of our tree as well. We had a really nice one this year and no one thought to take a picture of it, nor a picture of all of us either. This was our first Christmas with a married Jim and Abby and we don't have a picture of it. Auntie would never have allowed that to happen. Shame on us!

Auntie would have so loved the wedding pictures, and the wedding itself, of course. If she'd been born just a few years later she would have enjoyed posting pictures on the internet like her grand-nieces do. I suspect she would have been far more adept at handling the technology than I am. If I were better at these things there'd be pictures on my blog...

I also just realized that I didn't make Auntie's tea cookies for Christmas. I did make them this past year, but for a bridal shower. Somehow at Christmas I got so busy with all the knitting that I cut back on the baking. I'm probably better off for it when I step on the scales, although I do have holiday pounds to lose, but somehow it doesn't make me feel better that we didn't have Auntie's cookies, even if we did have Grammy's carrot salad.

Sometimes I feel as if we've had a heavy weight of responsibility laid on the shoulders of the adults of our generation and that we aren't doing a very good job of living up to the legacy that was left to us. We are forgetting to do some of the small things and not doing a very good job with some of the big things either. We could use a whole lot more mentoring, but our mentors are no longer with us. The things that they did with seeming ease, we struggle to do at all. The things they did routinely, we just plain forget. So one of my New Year's resolutions is to try to remember to do the things that Auntie, or Ma, or even my own mother would have remembered to do, including to get pictures...