Blast from the Past

This little "book" isn't as old as the geography I posted a few days ago--not by a hundred years. The geography was from 1846--this is from 1946--give or take a year.

It was made, I think, b a friend of my mother's--pictures cut from magazine like Look or Life or Saturday Evening Post, pasted on pinked fabric rectangles, and hand stitched into a simple book.

The pictures were chosen with care--my mother had an Irish setter name Boy and the woman in the picture above looks a great deal like my mother back then.

I remember still loving to look at these pictures even when I had actual story books. Probably because they were somehow personal to my life--my father came home from the war and then he had a job and came home from that. A baby brother came along and I helped push the baby carriage (and complained about the smell of the diaper pail.)

Lifesavers and Campbell's Soup were a big part of my childhood too. As were short dresses and patent leather shoes and very polite birthday parties for the young.

 

This bo0k has been sitting around my workroom because I thought I might make something similar for Josie. It never happened due to my inability to find relevant pictures in magazines and due to the ease of having a book printed with one's own photos. Josie has several of these and her memories will likely come from them. Plus every once in a while she likes to look at all my past Josie blogs. 

Hard to believe that today she is four. Sometimes she seems more like twelve...or twenty-seven--with a rare reversion to a Terrible Two.

It's been a joy watching her grow and learn. It's been amazing to be at once her grandmother and her playmate. Yesterday I was given a crown and a plume and was told I was queen and I needed to do something about the scary monster over there. So I scared it away while Josie, who was a princess who could sting things, zapped the pterodactyl (ceiling fan) that was hovering over us.

"It's fun playing pretend," she said, putting a straw hat on her rocking horse (once my rocking horse.) "Now Philly can be the Gardinal Farmer."

I have no idea what that means but I agree heartily. It's fun playing pretend. I, for one, have never stopped.