Once you start looking at your photo files it's hard to stop.These are my parents:
Violet and Charles
How very young they look in these photos taken a year or two before they married in 1933.
I still remember the stories of how mom had to wear her wedding ring on a chain around her neck because married woman had to give up their jobs during the depression. She really loved her job and often joked that she had better office skills than homemaking ones and how ironic it was that her younger sister, who was a marvel at the sewing machine, great with hair curlers and cooking skills, had 3 boys while she had 4 girls.
Dad finished medical school and tried to enlist in the army during the Second World War ,they didn't want him because of his flat feet, and ended up in the Air Force serving at several bases across Canada. I will never forget that Newfoundland was not an official part of Canada then because of his stories of flying over and not landing there thus missing the chance to get an overseas medal.
He used to tell rather gruesome stories of crashes by the training pilots at the dinner table and about the conditions of some of the men after the war as he worked with a medical team demobbing the airmen. It's a surprise that even one of us entered the health field. It wasn't me!
I have lots of good memories but I wish I had paid more attention to more of the stories. Once parents are gone there's only a shadow left behind, a whisper of their presence.
2 comments:
Thank you for sharing those wonderful memories. You look like your mother.
I think we all regret not paying attention to the stories we heard as kids. It should serve as an example to US to write what we can about OUR stories, so our families will forever have those memories.
Thankfully my mother made notes on the back of family photos and wrote a lovely long record of what she remember of growing up, so I have more info than some people end up with.
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