End of Semester and Passage of Time

Anticipation, excitement, weariness, that feeling that it just CAN’T arrive soon enough—all things that one particular group of people possess in abundance as the end of December approaches.

—No, not kids: I’m talking about teachers!

State tests and semester exams are exhausting things, and not just for the students. I don’t remember how I felt about all this, years ago, when I was a much younger teacher; time passes and (perhaps fortunately) blurs all the really bad memories a little. But the work certainly hits me harder these days.

I look at this picture and wonder what that child would’ve said if she’d been told what her life would be, now.

My parents must’ve been somewhat enlightened for their time—you see that Jack ALSO had a baby doll. And I ALSO had a tricycle. (Later on, we both had bicycles and—gasp!—BB guns at the same time. Well, I was something of a tomboy. And Jack would’ve made a great father if he’d lived longer.) My older self wears fewer smiles, seems to have too many cares and worries.  
  
Tonight, as I continued combing through the papers, census records, letters, photos I have in my files, I was thinking about all this, and I found this picture:

Again, my great-grandparents, Andrew J. and Lucretia (Wells) Alawine. They are considerably more careworn themselves than they were in 1903. You see now that she uses a cane, that he seems a little stooped.

 Time has passed, you know…

Before my well-earned Christmas vacation starts (now--when I actually have to consider if I have time to go into family history in detail about a couple of other things), it might behoove us to remember how we all are changed—I’d like to think, “refined”, to use a Biblical term—as we age.

So this post will once again be more about photos and how—though we age—there’s still that indescribable something in our eyes, around our mouths, in the way we tilt our heads, that stays the same through all the long years.

For instance: Remember that gathering a while back? (For reference, re-read “Virtual Family Reunion.”) I found a few photos tonight that made me laugh, made me shake my head, made me teary-eyed.

In October of 1977, after Jack died, I wasn’t “feeling” family reunion. I know my parents weren’t. Uncle Roosevelt was very ill (and not there that day, I believe); Aunt Clara, Aunt Bessie, Aunt Ila, Aunt Bonnie, Aunt Turin: all gone. 

Yet here were the others, with mostly happy expressions. Standing, left to right: Omera, Bob, Beatrice, Ola Mae. Sitting: Sylvia, Pruitt, Creacie, Sammy…old now, but having a good time again.

I see the same spirit in their faces that I see in photos from many years before this one.

                  Bob and Ola Mae. (I love his dress!)

Bob and the twins (Sylvia and Turin). It makes me happy every time I see this picture, partly because of the mule in the background and the family dog in front of the girls. I don’t know anything about the dog; this photo was from about ninety years ago! But since he/she is sitting calmly in front of the twins, in a pose of great honor, he must’ve been much loved.  

You know that my pictures from the 1900’s are going to have Bob in them, because, of course, Bob was my father. It’s a good thing that he was gregarious and seemed always to have one or two of the 10 sisters close by when someone happened along with camera and film—both of which surely must’ve been a luxury in those days.

I observed in the “Virtual Family Reunion” post that Ila Dean was in the “sisters” picture at the far right. I want the cousins to verify this, please. On a rough sketch I made identifying the women, I have penciled in, “Sylvia.” Yet she doesn’t appear to be Sylvia, and, anyway, neither her children nor her husband were in the picture; however, Ila’s son Don was. (He was the unlucky person controlling Bill Perkins!) 

Speaking of time passing, and Don and his mother Ila, these pictures were taken in 1955, and, I believe, in Mobile, where the Smiths were living at that time. I have a vague memory of that porch, and it seems that someone considered it a good sort of prop in the same way the old car was used in my “Virtual Family Reunion” pictures, about 10 years earlier. My dad seems a little older here—but obviously not too much less mischievous, perhaps. His tie is flying in a pretty jaunty way in the 1945 picture, and here, he and Don are defying the laws of physics by leaning backwards and looking over the top of the swing

Aunt Ila sat more sedately. If you look very closely, you’ll see under the swing a couple of chubby little legs and, between the slats, a downturned face and (it seems) frowning eyes. I was always good at photo-bombing. 
























I started this blog with the 1903 photo of the Alawine family. Here it is again:

My grandparents, remember, are at the right-hand side: Samuel Thomas (standing, holding Creacie), and Maggie Evalina (sitting holding Clara on her lap). I know that people who posed in these older pictures were told to hold still for a longer period of time than we have to pose, today, even with our cell phone cameras. I know that it was easier to maintain a solemn expression than to hold a smile; you try it! And yet in Maggie’s posture, her downturned face with that upward glance, I’ve always thought I saw grief.

She wasn’t at all a grim person. But she was still very young here, probably pregnant again, and she’d lost a year-old son three years before the photo was taken. Her daughter Ila (look above, at the woman in the swing) is “chillin’”, with her right arm over Andrew’s knee and, it appears, her left across Lucretia’s.

I’ve wondered how they got all those kids to hold serious expressions. But not all did: on Andrew’s lap is his namesake grandson Andrew Thaggard, who obviously knows something the others don’t. 

Some six years later, my grandparents' faces are much the same…again, just a little more careworn.

The twins, on either side of the photo, wear matching dark polka-dotted dresses. You see Roosevelt (on Sam’s lap) and Sammy (on Maggie’s lap). Ila is behind them, and Clara to the left, Creacie to the right.

And, though neither Ola Mae nor my father is in the picture yet, Maggie is probably pregnant again!

There’s no “moral” to this story. It’s just all nostalgia and, maybe, longing, tonight. I never knew grandparents; because of the generation “skip” I spoke of in an earlier post, my grandparents were all gone before I was born. I look at these faces and my own from long ago and wonder always what would’ve been in our eyes and in our expressions if we’d been able then to see what we are now. 


Ælfwine