Sometimes We Get Lucky

In May of 2007 I wrote about favorite photos I'd misplaced two years earlier. At the time of that post I'd given up hope of ever finding them, assuming I must have accidentally tossed out the file folder they were in when I'd last seen them. Last week, going through yet another plastic storage box stacked in the closet of what will soon be Kim's bedroom, I found the file with the photos in it. I felt as though this discovery was a reward from the universe, a vote of confidence that Kim and I are on the right track with her upcoming move into my home. It also occurred to me that there was a subtext to the message: Stop giving up so easily! I'll try to remember that.

The fact that these photos are some of my favorites doesn't necessarily mean that my daughters are all that crazy about them, so I hope they'll forgive me for posting them in spite of that. I bet you'll understand why I love them.

These little pirates are Kelli (on the left) and Kim (with her jaw stuffed full of candy) when they were 2 1/2 and 4 1/2, respectively. We lived in Bridge City, Texas then and snapshots from that period are rare.

This shot was taken in 1969 at a scenic overlook somewhere between Texas and Ohio. I don't know where the dog came from, but the expressions on the girls' faces show that they were more interested in the dog than in the mountains.

My daughters wouldn't be caught dead wearing these clothes in public, and they may kill me for posting this one. There was a lake behind our first house in Georgia--a lake full of catfish and also full of mallards. Unfortunately, the banks of the lake were covered in ducks--t, and the girls weren't allowed to fish in anything but their oldest, worst clothes. I hope that sufficiently explains Kelli's high-waters and Kim's shorts/tights combo.

Same lake the following summer (1973). Nobody ever swam in the lake (again because of the mallards), but there was a city swimming pool three blocks from our house. I like the view of the lake in this one, but what makes it special is the view of my daughters' pretty hair. I still remember how Kelli's curls and Kim's long, straight locks felt in my hands.  Edited 5/3/2014:  I have edited the above photo after realizing that this post gets a large number of hits from people who have seen this picture on Google Images and clicked on it for a closer look. One daughter is wearing a yellow bathing suit, the other an orange one, but I guess those colors don't show up clearly in a thumbnail photo. Ewww! 

This one was taken much later ('78 or '79) after we'd moved from Georgia to New York, back to Georgia, and then here--Louisiana. Kim was touching up her Farrah Fawcett hairstyle before heading off to her after-school job. So pretty!

This is my other pretty girl, Kelli, in 1980. I don't know where she got her natural curls, but I love the way this photo shows them off. The sofa in this picture is the bargain couch that lasted more than twenty years. On the wall behind Kelli are two of four door mirrors, with halves of placemats, cut lengthwise, between them. I had asked my husband months earlier to hang them for me, and he kept putting it off, explaining the complications of the arrangement I wanted. One afternoon it dawned on me that I could use a small book to measure the distance between the mirrors and a larger book, its spine laid on the back of the sofa, to measure where the bottoms of the mirrors should be. I had them all hung in an hour.

There were other photos among the missing ones, now recovered, but these are the ones I remembered when I'd think about what I'd lost. The universe gave them back to me, now I'm putting them out in the blogosphere.