For two years, I have been trying to get organized. Help!!! Is the constant refrain in my brain. I know it is beyond my powers to do this alone. Prayer helps because:

Actually, I got help. A miracle occurred, and someone told me about a family who might have a member who could help me as an assistant.
So we got together; I interviewed this young person and almost immediately determined that she was one of the few people in the world who is what I like to call “a finisher.”

She likes to take on a task and finish it. It is no longer fresh in my mind what actual phrase she used or which questions I asked her that gave me this information. But it got solidly implanted in my brain while we spoke. I hired her on the spot at what I consider an adult wage. She is between high school and college, so working for me as part of her several summer jobs is perfect for both of us. She is worth every penny and nice as she can be. I am delighted with her and hope she stays all summer until she must leave for school.

So far, we are organizing photos, old letters, and boxes of fragments from my life, which we had stored in the garage. We brought my grandparents’ correspondence from their engagement into the house. Now, they are at the top of one of the two closets in my office. Photos of the two of them make me realize how young they were, even though I have always considered my grandfather to have married as an older man. He was only 40 when he married my grandmother, and she was 22. The fact that she died at 24 from the Spanish Flu has been part of the family lore my whole life. Her baby daughter, my mother, was only 8 months old when her mother died. She never knew her mother and was raised by her father’s mother, whom she called “Gramma,” and by her loving father.

Organization brings all sorts of things to light, starting with my grandparents and older relatives; they must be catalogued. Many years of my birth family’s life, before I married, bring back childhood memories. Thousands of baby photos of my children and their children as they grew up clog my computer. Which ones should I delete? Sometimes, it is hard to know who is who. The resemblance is uncanny in some cases. Is that Helen, or is that Daisy? They looked so much alike as children; it takes a background to understand who they are. Charley Jr and his son look like clones of each other in photos when they were young. The memories these photos and memorabilia bring to the surface can engulf me in a nostalgic coma. Sometimes, it is as if one can literally step back in time to participate in the goings-on of the day. Particularly when there is a video of the party or some daily activity. There is a rush of feeling, love, longing, and the knowledge that life has moved on. Yet, I linger over the photos, drinking in the little details, enjoying “noticing” things that were just background when the photo was taken.

Sadly, there are photos of puppies that do not “ring a bell.” Who were the parents? I thought I would never forget, but they seem to run together after so many other litters. The same is true of foals. The gestation period for horses seems endless, so the birth of a new foal was momentous. Each one was so longed for. Each one was so special at the time. How could I forget? But that is what happens. With a farm filled with horses and dogs, not to mention other farm animals, it is difficult, all these years later, to see the photos and know which ones they are. So today, I offer a compilation of mother and baby photos along with pictures of grandchildren, now young adults, posing with my mother, who died 5 years ago.

I have found old scrapbooks from my grandmother, Helen Dow Hale. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1916. There is a partial scrapbook she began after she married, but it stopped abruptly because she died in the fall of 1918. She also started a baby book for my mother with all her small triumphs and growth information. But because of Helen’s death from the flu, only the first eight months of her baby’s life are documented.

My assistant is familiar with computers and programs that baffle me. She is helping me make memes using my pictures taken with my iPhone. The images are lovely, so I want to watermark them so they will have my logo if they travel out over the Internet. Having this done by someone who knows how is so much faster than my halting efforts. It is freeing me up for other projects.

Will I live long enough to finish any of these? It is a reason to take care of my health because I know these are worth preserving. The best way to do that is in book form. I learned when my mother died that no one cares about much of the memorabilia. But the actual story is valuable. It fits into history, making it personal and filling in blanks where straight facts leave huge holes and empty spaces that make the reader say, “Well, then what happened? How did people live? What did they do with themselves before electronics? How did they feel about their families? What was normal? What was considered outside the norm?”

Distilling all this information into readable “bites” is such fun, but sometimes it is overwhelming, too. That is why having someone help me is so necessary and valuable. This is part of a project that will take the rest of my life, but that is a pleasant prospect. Will I ever get this into a book or two? Wish me well.

Copyright©. 2025 Bonnie B. Matheson