Family portrait

This picture was taken in about 1956. I like how happy we looked.

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Greenbelt

I spent most of my elementary years in Greenbelt, MD, the first planned community in the U.S., built during the Roosevelt years for military families. It was a great place to grow up--everything within walking distance, very little traffic but public transportation, several community events every year, and lots of kids to play with. This picture shows a station wagon and two public buses in the central area. There are hundreds more pictures in the Library of Congress archives.

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Snow

On a March 2004 visit to see my mother in Ironwood, MI, she and my stepdad took me to Lake Superior. This picture was taken from the shore, and it shows cliffs and hills of ice and snow all piled up along the shore. I walked out onto the ice (to my mother's terror and screaming that I come back) and saw caves on the other side of these hills, formed from the piled up sheets of ice that were several feet thick. It was beautiful and amazing. Someday I'd like to explore there again.
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Laundry

Children imitate their parents and older kids. I know two little girls, the younger of whom follows her big sister around, almost every step, and copies everything the older girl does. In this picture I was learning how to do something my mother did often, but hardly anybody does it anymore. It's almost an outdated skill.

Another thing I like about this picture is what it shows about the informality of playclothes that was perfectly acceptable back then. (My mother would never have allowed me outdoors in something considered inappropriate.)

Great-grandparents #1

My maternal grandfather's parents were Carl and Johanna. They came from Sweden. When my mother and her twin sister were born, Johanna took care of them for about a month while my grandmother was hospitalized with childbed fever. I once saw a picture of me standing next to my great-grandfather; I looked like I was about 6, but I don't remember him. Johanna died before I was born.

 

My nana

It is unclear where my maternal grandmother was born, but she was raised in a convent orphanage after her parents lived and died in Santiago de Cuba. The family was wealthy, and to be accepted in the higher ranks of society, they said they were from Spain. Her parents or just her father may have been, but her maternal grandmother, according to Nana's baptismal record, was a citizen of Cuba.

Elena Rosa went to northern Wisconsin with her sister and brother-in-law at the age of 17. She raised her daughters alone after she was widowed, and she worked very hard and long hours to do it. She was very strict, and she was angry more often than not with her grandchildren because of her perception that they were noisy, lazy, disobedient, and sassy.

Elena in the center, between her twin daughters.

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Grandpa from Sweden

Carl Swanson, born in Sweden in 1885, immigrated to Iron Belt, WI with his family when he was 7. He married Elena Rosa (from Cuba), and they had a pair of redheaded twin girls. Carl was a loving, gentle husband and father, but unfortunately, was killed in a mine explosion in 1925. He looks pretty young in this picture. I was told he had red hair.

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