This photo goes SO FAR back that it was taken BEFORE I WAS BORN. Like in the dark ages!
This is actually a picture of my (older) sister Aunt Anonymous when she was about three months old, with my Dad's mom. It's dated December, 1957. I didn't know this grandmother all that well during my childhood because when I was just a tiny tot she moved to Florida. I did talk to her on the phone a lot, and I remember the one summer at camp she was the ONLY person I wrote to. She sent me a postcard back that I still have addressed to Snoopy because on the first day of camp my bunkmates gave us all nicknames and mine was Snoopy -- although we never called each other that because we decided that the nicknames were dumb. But we must have decided that AFTER I wrote to my grandmother!
When I was in my 20s my mom wanted to go down to Florida to visit her sister and her mother-in-law and I was her travel buddy. It was THEN that I found out that my psychic talent likely came from my(still hard-to-believe) father's side of the family. Grandma Garrity told me that when she was a kid growing up in Brooklyn she lived in a house where she saw ghosts and heard spirits. They had a piano and late at night she'd hear someone playing the piano and she'd creep downstairs to investigate. She was brave like that for her whole life, I think. I went to visit that house shortly after that conversation and ended up writing a story about it for the paper I was editing at the time. It was cool to see where she grew up and how grand a lifestyle she must have had. The area was completely run down in the 1980s (I'm thinking it was in what is now Bedford-Stuyvesant) but you could still see the gorgeous architecture.
I have no idea where this photo was taken (since I wasn't alive yet), but I am thinking it was my parents' apartment on Long Island, because I recognize the glass decanter on the table as belonging to my family (it sat on our family hope chest for years!) but it may have been my grandmothers and she gave it to my parents when she went to Florida.
Anyway, isn't my grandmother elegant? (Okay, and Aunt Anonymous is pretty cute, too.)
3 comments:
Looks maybe like Tally's christening dress - I don't remember if your dad's mother was there that day or not. Wonderful old pictures bring back some great memories. Nice recollection on your part.
Just pointing out that Aunt A is only 1 year older than you, so you were almost alive during the Dark Ages! (And that decanter is now in Casa Anonymous). See you soon!
it was taken in the living room at 200 W merrick Rd in Freeport which was our first and only apt.
Nice series
Dad
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