Kodachrome...

It's funny the things you find when you're not looking.

I was having a rummage in a drawer this morning looking for a lip salve if you must know when I came across an envelope full of cards that I had forgotten about.  You know, old store loyalty cards, college ID from a creative writing course I did almost 10 years ago, old organ donor card etc etc  All cards that I have cleared out of my purse at some point or other, when it got too bulky to close.

Anyway, as I was going through them, I found this old photographic slide (original colour version in extras).  

It made me smile when I held it up to the light.  I have no idea when or where it was taken but I am assuming a wedding as the men are wearing red roses in their button holes.  I am the young girl on the right hand side, and my grandpa is sitting beside me on my left.  I have no idea who the older woman to my right is with the baby on her lap or who the man next to her is, but the younger couple on the left hand side is my mum's sister and her husband.

I have searched every corner of my memory but I am completely stumped as to who's wedding and when.  What I have remembered is we used to have reels and reels of these slides and the accompanying projector.  I had totally forgotten about that until I found this slide today. 

I have no idea where the rest of the slides or the projector is now.  They weren't in my mum's belongings when she died so I can only assume she got rid of them at some point.  

I keep saying the older I get, the more like my mum I become, and we were very alike in so many ways, apart from one.  I am a big nostalgia freak and she wasn't.   The past to me is as alive as the present (the future is something that is never to the forefront of my mind) but to my mum, the past was the past.  Over with.  Done and dusted.  A closed door once she'd walked through it.

Thinking about it now, I kind of envy her that strength of mind, that ability to move forward without looking back, as sometimes I feel as though I am wading through treacle when it comes to the past.  Not in a bad way, just that I seem to spend a lot of time there in my head and that can impede the  present.

My gran (my mum's mum) on the other hand was just like me (or I'm like her I should say) as she attached sentimental value to just about everything, which means she held onto things far longer than was necessary.  

It's thanks to my gran that I have my mum's 21st birthday cards, my first birthday cards, boxes of family photos, school report cards, my mum's Met police photos and all the press clippings from her award of the George Medal to name a few, and this little Kodachrome slide.  

She kept it in her purse for years and years, till she died in fact.  My mum then kept it in her purse till it then came into my possession.   A sign perhaps that the past wasn't as closed to her as I thought.  

I put it back in the drawer to keep it safe.  Safe from what?  And why?  Who knows?  It seemed the right thing to do.

Mamma don't take my Kodachrome away :-)