One of the most extraordinary things about my mother’s 80th birthday last week was her gifts to us! To each grandchild she gave beautiful engraved keyrings, and to each of her children – my two brothers and me – she gave a photobook and a CD of photos of our childhood in Canada and Papua New Guinnea. None of us had seen these photos from 30-40 years ago because most of them were on slides; it must have been a hell of a job to get them Cd’ed and it was such a wonderfully unexpected surprise! I keep looking at all of the photos with a mixture of nostalgia and joy; actually I can’t seem to STOP looking at them because I am gobsmacked at how cute I was haha!
One of the best things is to see Dad again; he isn’t in many of the photos because he must have taken most of them – our wonderful father, Brinsley Lane, who died suddenly when we were still in our teens and Mother was just entering her 40s.
Her gift to us is, of course, ongoing – a rich and vibrant record of a strange, varied and unpredictable childhood that is/was so much like Narnia – magical!
Thanks Mama!
jmgoyder 