Way Back When

For my birthday this year mom gave me photos, mostly of me. Many I didn't even know she had, just as many I didn't remember ever striking the pose. Some of the photos were copies of those I'd given to her some years prior. Mom's been purging, giving away photos, trinkets and other boxed evidence of lives once lived.
I started drawing and painting more, thirty-four years ago completing my first year in high school. A favorite teacher talked me into entering art and craft fairs. Lo and behold I won a few. Mom was there for at least one award ceremony. She came with me once to the Art Institute and from that moment on, she deemed me, "weird."

Daughter asks, "was that a velour shirt?" Indeed it was and while don't remember this the circumstances of this photo, but I do remember that shirt. No doubt it was a hand-me-down from someone, though not my older brother because I was bigger. Mom framed this photo as if daughter needed any further evidence of my lifetime geek-dom.

Twenty years ago I was twenty-eight years old with a young son and even younger daughter. Though un-raveling day by day, the seams of marriage held for nearly another decade more. Besides the joys experienced by being an active participant in the growth of aforementioned son and daughter that decade yielded little in the way of bliss. It was probably the most troubling of the four I've spent in this here life. The three years between 15 and 18 were no cakewalk though.

As you may have guessed looking at the photos has kicked up a dusting of memories. Some good, some bad, some vivid and some a tad fuzzy. The memories and the photos sparking same are evidence of a life once lived, for better or worse, it is the way it was.