Several of my aunts and uncles died in the past year, and their kids have been going through the old family photos and sending them around. This photo, which was found with Uncle George and Aunt Cathleen's things, is my all-time favorite photo of my brother Eric and me. It was shot in the summer of 1949. We were, respectively, three and five years old. You can certainly see our Norwegian DNA writ all over us, and how very much we resembled each other when we were young.
The photo is taken in the garden of the house my dad built on 10 acres of second-growth timber in what is now either Alderwood Manor or Lynwood, Washington. I never could keep straight where one town began and another left off.
The delphinium are splendid, including the one that appears to spout from my brother's head. Dad supplemented the family income by raising rabbits for fur, and the abundant rabbit manure that was a byproduct affected the garden like steroids affect body builders. All the flowers were enormous, and I can remember that the sweet peas grew 10 feet up the trellis.
When I look at this photo, in my memory I can smell the sweetness of the clover blossoms around our ankles, and the pungency of the freshly-peeled alder poles Dad made into the fence. Eric and I had the job of peeling the poles and I can remember how the alder sap would stain our hands orange.
I also can't help but notice the ruffled pinafore and the puffed sleeve dress, both of which predated Perma-press fabrics by about 15 years. By the time this photo was shot, Mom had three little kids, yet somehow found time to iron this fussy little dress and pinafore. I can remember her standing at the ironing board, sprinkling the clothes with a water-filled vinegar bottle with a sprinkler top, and listening to the soap operas on the radio.
Eric's suspenders were crossed in the front and the back because otherwise he couldn't keep his pants up. No doubt they were hand-me downs from some cousin on my dad's side of the family, as this wasn't all that long after World War II and specialized kids' clothes were still in short supply.
For Eric and me, this time of our lives was paradisial. We spent all day, every day, in the forest and the meadows, picking berries, feeding the animals, playing with the dog. When I was up in the northwest for a family reunion in the summer of 2007, I walked out into a meadow on Whidbey Island one Saturday morning in early July and smelled smells and heard birdsongs that I hadn't heard since these days of my childhood.
This photo reminds me that when we were really young, my brother was my best playmate and friend. We grew dramatically apart during our school years, as he went to an all-boys' school and I went to an all-girls' school, and our lives never seemed to intersect. I moved into the realm of ballet and music lessons and he was playing sports and making model airplanes. We didn't really become friends again until fairly late in our adult lives, and often it's our shared memories of days like the one you see pictured that's recemented our friendship.
family photo vintage Washington+State childhood garden organic 1940s postwar
what a lovely photo! Nice clover in the foreground and the vintage clothing. What's with the suspenders crossed in front? Is that usual?
Posted by: Nicole | January 05, 2009 at 04:25 PM