Listening to Old Voices
And looking at old photos
Dotty (age 89) holding her senior portrait (age 17)
My mom, Dotty, moved to an assisted living facility last year (long story, tough year). Ever since we sold her home of sixty+ years in Lowell, MA, I’ve had a giant trunk filled with old family photos sitting in my home office. The photos range from the early 1950s through the 1990s and include everything from snapshots of my dad’s army days, to my parents’ wedding, to family vacations much more. My goal is to digitize much of this trove of photos but I’ve been procrastinating.* A lot of the old photos lacked context and there are many faces I am unfamiliar with. That’s where my mom comes in.
On Saturday this past weekend, my older sister was out and about with my mom (hairdo, shopping, etc.). On their way home, they popped by for a visit. We took the opportunity to drag trunk out of my office and spread out some old photos. My sister and I got some context, a few names put to unknown faces, and heard a few new (to us) stories from Dotty.
I took the opportunity to capture few photos of my mom looking through the photos and flipping through the albums. Above is my mom, 89, holding her High School senior portrait.
It was a memorable day.
* I actually started this project during Covid when I digitized a series of old 120 negatives I found at my mom’s house. I will be publishing them and the new ones in a series of blog posts here.