In leaving the house though, they came across the shelf full of slides. Tricky little things- so delicate and difficult to view. Dan and I offered (ok- reality is that I offered and Dan’s along for the ride) to take them, borrow Ted’s slide scanner (Thank you Ted!!!), and scan them in to a computer to preserve them in a more versatile format.
Little did we know that there are boxes, upon boxes of slides- some of them labeled by date, some with random numbers, some in little cartridges, some in carousels with tiny scribbling on top. Needless to say, our small apartment in Somerville is rapidly filled with this project- each slide requiring careful brushing to remove the dust, then loading into the scanner. One roll takes 45 minutes to scan. So, we’ve developed a system with stickers to represent those that have been cleaned and those that have been scanned. We’ve scheduled how we’re going to get all of them done by Christmas. It’s quite the assembly line.
Of course, in cleaning the slides, some of the little pictures catch my eye and as I hold them up to the light, I see myself, my mother, and my brother through my father’s eye. In this miniature world that I hold between my thumb and index finger, I’m surprised to see not just pictures of my family, but my father’s adoration for my mother, brother, and me. Emotions intricately painted on one and a half inch pieces of translucent plastic- my mother curling my hair (part of the siege on my baby fine, straight hair), my brother yelling in the dining room (I think he liked the echo), my brother and I playing in the snow, two foot steps up to a rainbow colored toy kicked over in the white snow.
Some of the pictures make me laugh out-loud, I show Dan, and we laugh together. Some of them make me cry. Some of them make Dan laugh, he shows me, and we laugh together. Sitting on the floor with the mini-brush and the slides in my hands, alternating laughing and crying, I’m thrown back to the days when my family received the slides in the mail, made popcorn, and sat on the floor in the dining room as we watched the slide show on the wall.
Although we’re doing this for my parents for Christmas, I feel like this has been a gift to me. As I look at the volume of pictures capturing every facet of my life and family, I am relieved to know that my whole childhood is not lost with the sale of my childhood home.
Barton Family Gallery