A long time ago...

OK, this is kind of funny, or not, depending on your perspective.

Earlier today, I was trying to find an old post I made, having to do with the opening of "A Time for Love." I noticed this picture in passing, and picked up on something new about it.


The picture was taken in my daughter's living room, about a year ago. If you look on the wall, between my son David and Poppop (Jaycie's maternal grandpop - Lyn's dad), you might notice a back and white pencil drawing. I hadn't quite realized it was hanging there until today. It has a history.

Lynn's aunt, my former sister-in-law, found it in a sketchpad that had belonged to her mother, my former mother-in-law, shortly after her mother's death (at 93). After finding it, she had it reproduced, and gave framed copies to each of my children, as well as making one for me, which Lynn gave to me on that day of our reunion, which you old-timers here might remember, after a three-year estrangement.

I recognized it right away, because it is me, drawn, apparently, from the official engagement picture that appeared in our local paper several months before I married Lynn's and the other kids' dad, and I can even prove it:


It was taken a few months after my 20th birthday. (Good God, I think back, how could anybody, at only 20, make a wise decision about who they would wish to spend the rest of their life with?)

Much family healing has gone on since, including the ill will between me and my former sister-in-law, and much of that healing was due to her gracious act of having that little forgotten sketch reproduced.

Good stuff still happens, folks, sometimes from directions you might never expect.

Ann

Beautiful!

That's a beautiful photograph. Could we see a photograph of the sketch, please?

What Shelagh said.

Oh, good grief. Well, I did bring it up, didn't I. I had to pull it down from the upper shelf of my closet. I've never found a place to hang it. I think that it stayed in my mother-in-law's sketchbook because she wasn't pleased with the result. The eyes don't seem right. Then again, maybe she just saw me from a perspective that I do not want to see in myself. Oh, well.



Ann

I like it. I can see why your daughter found a place for it. It may not be as good a likeness as the photo, but it has artistic merit. Your daughter would appreciate that.