ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
 |
on a tissue - thin paper napkin or placemat.
I wish I knew what this list represents --
maybe school chums or a Sunday school class?
I recognize the first three names:
Rovilla's first cousins:
Edna ~ b 1889; Nina ~ b 1891; Ruth ~ b 1892
Their mother -- Alice --
and Rovilla's mother -- Anna -- were sisters.
This family of cousins featured prominently in the memories that Rovilla (1891 - 1966) passed on to my mother and me. I was only nine years old when my grandmother died, yet I had already absorbed numerous stories of these cousins who were close in age to her and lived nearby in Emporia, Kansas.
as noted by Rovilla, in her later,
more sophisticated cursive
October 3, 1907
Notice the fishbowl!
In the recent novel The Correspondent, author Virginia Evans takes a curiously bleak view of the staying power of family photos, placing them a distant second to written correspondence:
"Perhaps if you have children . . . grandchildren, they . . . may keep some old photos in a book on a shelf, and perhaps two or three times in a lifetime may turn the page and find your face and think, Ah, yes, doesn’t Jimmy resemble this great-great-grandfather Mick, and continue to turn the page, and so that will be what is left of you, nearly erased, in fewer than three generations, and your life, the life you see from the inside, right now, as monumental, will be reduced to the blood in their veins and perhaps, if you are lucky, a distant namesake . . . (46)"
Only "two or three times in a lifetime"? Given my own experience, I'm not so sure about that. I have been looking at these dear faces for decades and continue to pour over them, like returning again and again to a beloved novel, bringing all the characters to life once again in my mind's eye, piecing together whatever I can of Grandmother Rovilla's life before the brief time that I knew her -- and those before her whom I never knew. The thing about Rovilla -- she was a born archivist! Looking through all the letters and photos that she saved for posterity, I can see that it is going to take me the rest of my life to keep up with her.
I was recently re-reading Rovilla's obituary (June 14, 1966) and among those listed in attendance at the funeral, were "Edna and Will Morgan." I was nine years old that summer, but I was completely oblivious. I wish I could go back in time to that day and be more aware and retain a conscious realization of meeting Edna. I don't have that, but I do have her high school music book:
by Nina's granddaughters -- my third cousins!
How grateful I am to have met several of them,
thanks to the miracle of blogspot & facebook!
To be featured again next time,
The Reider Family
Nathaniel (1860 - )
Back: Nina (1891 - 1966), Edna (1889 - 1967)
Ruth (1892 - ), Willie (1895 - )
*********************
MORE FAMILY STORIES TO COME
in the meantime . . .
Lots of Family Pictures: Calendar 2024
Calendar 2025: #1 ~ #2 ~ #3
Photo Ablums: Gravestones & Grandparents
There's no vocabulary for love within a family,
love that's lived in but not looked at,
love within the light of which all else is seen,
the love within which all other love finds speech.
This love is silent." ~ T. S. Eliot
ENTIRE SERIES:
Family History #1
Family History #2
Family History #3
Family History #4
Family History #5
Family History #6
Family History #7
Family History #8
Family History #9
Next Fortnightly Post: Family History #10
Monday, September 28, 2026
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
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