Last night, Caitch (Jon's name for Caitrin when he isn't calling her "Caitronic" or "Caitron the neutron bomb") spent the evening paging through the family photo albums (of which there are a paltry four) that are the result of being roped into Creative Memories parties with women in long skirts who submit to their husbands (there was a time...). Said albums are all on the lowest shelf of our bookcase (underneath poetry books, Sister Wendy videos, and my E.M. Forster collection). I tried to hide them from view by situating the rocking chair in front of that shelf (to prevent the dog from peeing on them in the middle of the night... like he did my Shakespeare and art books in the other room... where's that arsenic again? Here, puppy, puppy, puppy...)
The dog is still muddled (my master plan is working) but Caitrin, the youngest child of five (to whom photo albums mean the world) is like a heat-seeking missile for all things nostalgia. She locked on the cache and made the tragic discovery that she is hardly in any of the photos. Oh yes, her tossled head of curly brown hair appears toward the back end of the most recent album, but all the other pages were filled with California life, a life she doesn't remember.
We moved to Ohio when she was only two. When we stayed for eight weeks in an apartment building and then moved to our new house, she thought our references to California must mean those airless, humid, drug-dealing apartments up the street. She dubbed them "The California Apartments" and to this day, when we drive by, someone calls out "Hey, it's the California apartments."
Well, now that she's a big eight, the truth is out—California turns out to be heaven short of the cherubim, filled with sunshine and smiles, outdoor picnics in winter and extended family at all celebrations. Who switched up the domiciles? What the heck are we doing here, in the country of God and guns and very little family?
She cried on my shoulder. I almost cried on hers.
How was I to know that I'd spend the best years of my adult youth working on photo albums for kids who couldn't care less while the youngest has nothing to page through for the necessary development of an intact ego and self-image?
Think I'll post two deposits to the therapy fund this week. We don't pay for college. As good Californians, we offer a full treatment plan for adult children who had less than four pages of photos in the family albums. I think she'll be cashing in.
1 comment:
Hi Julie. My wife was actually a Creative Memories consultant (not "dealer!") a few years ago, but never really got much of a business going, since most of her social contacts happen through church and her CM predecessors already had that market sewn up (which is how she got into it in the first place, of course.) She no longer hawks the product but the second Friday of each month is the regular night for her and some friends to get together to work on their albums. Julie does a nice job - she's a perfectionist with her arts and crafts - so our family history is pretty well covered in those albums. But we don't get them out to look at very often. Too busy living in the here and now. But we'll dig them later on down the road.
Our family also made a California-to-the-Midwest sojourn, but for us it was heading back home. Both our families are based here in the Grand Rapids area, so when we had our twins up in Marin County, it was a no-brainer to head back to MI.
Our family photo problems are more about having cheap cameras so that we don't have as many close-ups or as much variety of composition as I wish we had. Of course we all know families who have wonderful, splendid libraries of adorable videos capturing all the significant rites of passage for each of their remarkable offspring...
As always, I find it interesting and enjoyable to learn about your family life, etc. even if I don't always have much to offer in the way of comments!
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