Family Visit

So these are two cameras my dad had sitting around, back in the days when he was going to put a dark room in the basement bathroom. It's nice to have things in common with your family. I mean, all of us as a group, we're pretty similar anyway. But my two aunts from Washington stopped by yesterday on their way to Niagra Falls, my dad's sisters, and I haven't seen Aunt Mary since I was a very little girl, I know next to nothing about her. She brought out her new field camera to show me, and then Dad broke out these two, and they all started talking about their dad's photography and cameras, and it was just pretty nice. Then Dad agreed to let me take the one on the right home, and it needs to be cleaned up a lot, but how cool would it be to learn how to use that? So there's a new thing to do. It never occurred to me that my grandfather was into photography, and my aunt, in addition to my dad. That it could be like being into science fiction, or being big readers, or not liking ketchup.

We're not very close with our extended family, I haven't seen most of my aunts or uncles since childhood. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that (Carrie says my greatest skill is tolerance? That came up recently. We'll discuss that further another day, I have counter arguments.). We all have separate lives. They keep in touch a little. But the dynamic of watching my dad or my mom with their siblings is rare enough to be watched closely. Sometimes when he's talking to one of them, I see little peeks of Nick and Carrie and I. Funny how even when you don't grow up with it, the family patterns maintain. Also funny, how you forget that you are all grown from the same weird lifestyle tree, until you hear stories about your cousins doing odd things like becoming a doctor at 39 in the Caribbean when the kettle corn business didn't work out, or studying linguistics in Astoria and being really into RPGs, and it's like, well of course we're sort of the same, even from all the way across the country. Our parents grew up together after all. You know what's a real weird world? The destinies of middle class liberal family kids. There's some odd shit that happens there.



These are Mom's new chickens. We are going to call them The Survivors. We are not going to elaborate on that. Chickens are apparently all named out after travel trailers. Winnebagos. Wyandottes. Oh, and the white crested Polak. That one's my favorite.