in the circumstances, I shouldn’t really be looking through a keepsake box bound to make me cry – it did. I have a box my dad’s dad used to show me, and the keepsake I have of him and granny. the box is fairly uniteresting, but in it, he kept his momentoes of his father – who died as a merchant seaman when he was very young. he went into a home at that point as did his brother. larer his brother was a transport to NZ, and died there aged 16. in the box is his fathers seaman cards, english naturalisation and letters to his mother. there is one letter back. also flowers pressed from the grave of his brother, sent by the vicars wife to his mother. He had so little of a childhood, and valued these things hugely.
Also various pictures from his and gran’s childhood – some identifiable, and some not. Will flickr these as the canadian family can look and see if they can identify themselves [well, their parents/grandparents] in grans.
i then thought how poor my keepsakes will be. I have both too much and too little.
Helen I cannot ever imagine your keepsakes being poor. I know the value you place on things like that, and that in itself serves to show that any physical keepsakes you leave will be full of everything that you hold dear. Not to mention the fact that physical keepsakes and ‘things’ are only a part of what we leave behind us.
Some people don’t even think about stuff like that …
Helen
I know how proudly i talk about what my mum does for her living, even thoguh it came at a price for all of us, a far greater price i think, that the one your career has for your girls, as i’ve said before.
I know SB and BB will speak with awe and pride about you and how much they loved being flickr’d, read to, sung to sleep, taken to Italy on huge family holidays, dressed in beautiful clothes and made to feel beautiful inside and outside.
You do so well and while actual things are not everything, what you do and give you do with so much love that they couldn’t see it any other way.
Last night Max told me he goes to be feeling a failure every night for how much time he gives the children. Trouble is, i think he has a point, we are failing and you are so NOT failing. You give your girls so much time.