Wading in the past

I haven’t been posting all that much because I have been wading through the boxes and boxes of STUFF from my mother’s apartment.

My mother was a big record keeper. She noted every penny spent and on what. My parents kept folders on every piece of artwork they purchased.

Here you see the tags from most of the Persian carpets they purchased.

To save space, I have been pulling photos out of albums and putting them into shoe boxes by decade. My father had assembled folders of photos that had never made it into albums.

This was one of the photos I had found. 

Our family with their friend Rifka, just before she and her husband moved to New York. I am about three in this photo.

Here is a photo of my Aunt Dina, and her husband, Uncle Nathan in their home in Rutherford, NJ.

Nathan was like the prankster character you find in classic folk tales. Kids adored him. Adults were often exasperated by him.

Dina helped to support my mother’s family when they fell on hard times during the depression.

 

The color in the picture had faded. The walls in their dining room were painted magenta. The stairway was painted school bus yellow. The old Victorian house was painted the sort of colors that hippies might choose. Nathan painted his house in the colors that were on sale.

Both Dina and Nathan were pretty hard of hearing. Dina also didn’t see very well. In those days, I assumed that when you spoke to old people you had to TALK LOUD.

 

Here you see my mother and her older sister with their aunt and uncle. My mother was not quite 5’ 4”. Tanta Dina was teeny.

Unlike my grandmother, Dina and Nathan exuded warmth and love.They assumed that kids wanted ice cream and liked toys. The  visit  pictured here began with enormous  ice cream sodas ( cherry chocolate) that were immediately followed by lunch.

The boxes in my apartment are somewhat fewer. Slowly things are finding homes