• Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Events
  • Photo Gallery
  • Blog
  • Contact

A Joyful Noise

family photos

#TBT: Faded Photographs and Memories

March 2, 2017 by Melodye Shore

I know very little about this candid snapshot. Someone scrawled my name on the back, so I’m assuming it’s me. But it’s one of those pictures that raises more questions than it answers.

There’s a date stamp on the white border, which suggests the film roll was commercially developed. I hadn’t yet celebrated my first birthday, so what was the occasion? And whose shadow is that, hovering protectively over mine?  Lost in the moment…so me.  Probably concentrating on some newfound treasure, but I don’t know that for sure.

It’s not a keeper, in the traditional sense. But to me, it’s priceless, because it’s one of a handful of pictures that survived my itinerant childhood. And even in its blurry state, it manages to tell a story. My story. Here, the muted daughter of a fire-and-brimstone, fundamentalist preacher, who eventually found her own voice. Born into a cult-ish family, she eventually came into her own.

In this grainy, black-and-white photograph, I see also the broader picture. People don’t live forever. Snapshots fade, and memories gets swept into the dustbin of history. So don’t let your stories languish in a junk drawer (on a cell phone, a hard drive…). They belong to the collective, where they can be savored and shared.

Posted in: family archives, Photography, TBT, Throwback Thursday Tagged: archives, family photos, Melodye, photographs, preacher, TBT, throwback thursday

Topics

ab 2165 beach billy graham birds can i get a witness christmas family archives flowers freckles garden gardening harbor seals hope hummingbird hummingbird hatchlings hummingbird nest 2015 hummingbirds jeannine atkins joy joyful noise laguna beach land of medicine buddha memoir memoir writing monarch butterfly nana nancy drew new year's eve ocean orange county peace photography poetry rosa resolution rose sara seals serendipity tent revival thankful thursday thanksgiving the author's tent throwback thursday wordless wednesday writing

Recent Posts

  • My uncouth neighbors: A murder of crows
  • Smitten with Kittens, by Florence and Wendell Minor
  • Happy Valentine’s Day!
  • Happy New Year, 2022
  • The Badlands
  • TINY BIRD: A Hummingbird’s Amazing Journey
  • The welcome respite of rain

Archives

Copyright © 2022 .

Omega WordPress Theme by ThemeHall