and a paragraph on the back of each one, explainin what each one was

[cosmolinguist]

Here be lots of pictures. More for my benefit than anyone else's.


This picture is just ridiculously cute. It says "Christmas 1984" on the back so, just after his first birthday.


There's one like this of me, too: cereal bowl, Dad's cowboy hat. But his is cuter. My brother's always the photogenic one.


This one made my grandpa actually laugh yesterday, when we were looking at all these pictures.


The clothes and haircut were surely my mom's idea. The football was my dad's. Chris didn't stay a Vikings fan, despite this early conditioning. Some time when I was in high school, he decided he liked the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It seemed pretty random, so I asked him why. "Their uniforms are sweet!" he said. "Only best in the league!"


I bet he just did something naughty. Look at that face.


He hated going outside when he was little; he'd fall down and get snow on his face and cry and want to go inside. He got over that quickly, and has loved the outdoors ever since.


I just love this one.


Posing for his baseball card shot, I guess. This must be before we broke the dining room window (well, my dad pitched and my brother hit the foul ball; I was an innocent outfielder and delighted in not being at all to blame when Mom came out screaming at us), because after that we had to move the baseball games to the patch of grass by the barn and other farm buildings.


This is about how I remember him, actually: this is from when I was still in high school. My dad used to set up the video camera, but by this point Chris was fifteen or so and knew better about everything. And yes, those are the pajamas he slept in, even in the winter. He always said he was so hot. He'd open the windows too, if Mom let him, in the middle of winter. And she could never get him to put a jacket on. Last weekend when he was going out in his flimsy but trendy shirt from Express she told him to at least take a sweatshirt with. He insisted that it was hot out. It was thirty or forty degrees. (Fahrenheit, not celsius!)


I love this picture. My mom's all smiling and happy. I don't know how or why it was taken (I know when; those are Mom's Christmas decorations), but I kept thinking I took it. Now I wonder if I think that because I actually have some faint memory of doing so, or just because he often gave me that precise look when I was around. I can hear him snarling mumbled insults at me, just looking at it.


Chris and Rachel. They dated for something like three years, their senior year of high school (when this was taken, of course, at prom) until this spring. They stayed close, though. Rachel was here Wednesday night, crying more than almost anybody but laughing more too.


Last Christmas. (I only know this because I got that sweatshirt from my grandma the day before. I forgot my hair was ever that long!) We always sit on the couch and open the little presents in our stockings before tackling the stuff under the tree.


My mom was so insistent on setting up a family portrait when I got back from England last fall. I rolled my eyes. I didn't want to wear that sweater, and my hair never looked like that in real life. But I took a copy with me to England; I carried it around with me, showing it to people if I thought of it, but mostly just happy to have it around. It's the last non-snapshot picture we have of my brother.

Comments

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

*bawling eyes out*

Oh, Holly! Thank you for posting these unspeakably important pictures for us.

[cosmolinguist]

I felt a lot better than I thought I would after doing this. I wanted them someplace that I can see them no matter where I am.

[kalieris.livejournal.com]

These are great pictures, Holly. Thanks for posting them. (In that picture of your mom smiling at Chris, she looks so much like my mom! I have maybe 2 pictures of her smiling, ever. Even the hairstyle is similar...)

[guysterrules.livejournal.com]

Chris is very handsome. I love his expression in the kitchen with your Mom, the Hurry up and take the picture look.

[riddley-walker.livejournal.com]

i agree with yr granpa.

photographs are strange and beautiful things.
thank you very much for sharing them.

(also, i like the new(ish) icon of you. the one without effects, it's very sassy and suits you. or yr hinternet personality or whatever)

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the new icon is about the best photo I've ever seen of the Holly I know...

[cosmolinguist]

Oh yeah: I don't know what "without effects" means, but it sounds interesting. And I'm glad you like the picture. I didn't like it much at all when I took it, but I wanted a new icon of me so I used it anyway, and this is the second or third compliment I've received on it. So, obviously, I have no idea what people really like about me. :-)

[cosmolinguist]

He's definitely a handsome guy. He put effort into it, too, spending so much time on his hair and so much money on his clothes. And he never liked having his picture taken, especially once he got to be a teenager.

[emyjo.livejournal.com]

Holly, what a beautiful thing to do for your brother. Thank you for sharing.

[rainsinger.livejournal.com]

I started crying when I saw these, and I don't even know the man!

I do know loss though, and I'm terribly sorry you and your family are going through it.

Thank you for posting these and giving us a glimpse of the person he was/person you remember.

[cosmolinguist]

He was quite photogenic. :-) The pictures say a lot.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for sharing these with us. I really love the one where he's clearly done something naughty.

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

What I can't get over is how much you both look like your parents, given that I know that you were both adopted... it's quite startling.

[cosmolinguist]

I used to look exactly like my dad. I was always glad to be told that.

I'm glad we look like them. Mom mentioned once that Chris has asked about his biological parents, who they were and why they gave him up and stuff like that (she doesn't know, of course). But the subject has never interested me. They are my parents. Their family is my family. "We've known you since you were this big!" my mom's mom says, holding her hands a foot or two apart. And it's true. If married people, or old people and their pets, start to look like each other just from being around each other, I guess maybe I shouldn't be surprised that we look like my parents.

Or maybe it's just that everyone here is descended from Germans and Scandivnavians. :-)

[stealthmunchkin.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people who want to know about their biological parents want to know for that reason - "why did they give me up?". Of course, you know that no-one gave *you* up - they gave up a little blob with no personality. You are only you because of your parents, not because of whoever gave birth to you. If they'd adopted a different blob, it would have ended up more like you than not. That's why, for all that I can be very critical of your parents, I could never really dislike them - without them, there's no you...

[cosmolinguist]

Indeed. I am theirs; even if I didn't look like them I can tell you exactly which of my thoughts and habits and expressions come from them. I am critical of them too, but I think they did a fantastic job raising their kids.

[innerbrat]

Thank you for posting these. Don't ever lose them, for they are important.

I'd like to ay I can't begin to imagine what you're going through, but I can begin to imagine, and that beginning alone is more painful than I can deal.

I hope you're doing well enough, and my thoughts are with you.

[cosmolinguist]

I can begin to imagine, and that beginning alone is more painful than I can deal.

I know what you mean; I'm always like that, too, when something horrible happens to someone I can't help imagining some analogue of it happening to me—when my grandparents died I cried for my dad and his sister because I thought What would it be like if I lost one of my parents? But then my mind just slid away from the thought: the beginning is painful enough, I shrunk away from it.

[ihavemanyskills.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just wow.
You're a tough cookie, you know that?

[cosmolinguist]

People keep telling me that, but I really don't feel like one. Even now...

Three things

[angel-thane.livejournal.com]

i) Your brother was a really cute kid.
ii) Spiffy uniforms was how I chose my football team as well. Go Hammers!
iii) I know it doesn't make any logical sense, but you look a lot like your mother.

***

*HUG* Holly, you know we all love you, and our thoughts are with you.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Sorry it's taken me so long to get to these.

Thank you for posting them.

Love,

Tony

[cosmolinguist]

No need to be sorry. Especially when you've had a rough time yourself! But the pictures, the LJ posts, aren't going anywhere; they're always here to be looked at, and there's no time limit. That's one of the things I like about them.

[etoilepb.livejournal.com]

I like the "naughty" picture. It reminds me of someone I used to be. And many, many someones I used to know.

I only just got back to the 'net after oh-so-many days away. I can't say anything someone hasn't already, but a stranger in New York is thinking of you and your family.

[tragicallyjulia.livejournal.com]

Holly, I am so sorry. I've rewritten this comment three times, but there's just nothing that seems right to say.

These photographs are so wonderful, and I'm glad you have them to remind you of the love (and all those other complicated familial emotions) that you all have for each other.

[ted-souleater.livejournal.com]

I left a message on Andy's LJ, but I just wanted to say I'm really sorry to hear about your brother.

There are some nice pictures here. Your comments about your last family portrait remind me of my family, when my Mom insisted that we have a family portrait done with the whole family. And within 1 1/2 years, both my parents died, so it ended up being a very bittersweet picture, in retrospect. Strange how things work out sometimes.

[tubewalker.livejournal.com]

This is wonderful and totally sad. I'm just gazing at them and not knowing how to feel but not worrying about that too much, just glad to share them with you while you are as well. I'm thinking of you x

crawled out of the woodwork again

[uglybuffy.livejournal.com]

That's a nice picture taken last Christmas. He must be the same age as my sister. Hope you and your family are OK.

[cosmolinguist]

He would've been 22 next week.

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Old pictures are so important, aren't they?

After the initial shock of finding out about my dad's cancer, my mom went through all her boxes of old photos and made an album of him. There's one of him reading to me in my secret reading corner behind a chair in our old living room. I'd completely forgotten about that. Now it's my favorite photo.

[taimatsu]

One of the things that really BUGS me is that my mother hated having her photo taken. So we don't have a lot of good pictures of her. I have a folder of the best ones - my dad did a digital slideshow of them at the funeral, actually - but there just aren't enough. When I see or hear people being camera-shy these days it makes me want to go and shake them and ask if they have no compassion for their families, for goodness' sake. Which is stupid, but still.

[cosmolinguist]

It's not really stupid, though it'd probably throw them off a little. Such things aren't usually occasions when people want to be told "Yeahbut what about after you're DEAD!" :)

My brother actually hated having his photo taken for a while when he was younger, but you can't really complain too much when you're a little kid; people do what they want to you anyway. And then when he was a teenager there were of course millions of pictures of him and his friends being drunk and doing stupid things; exactly the sort of pictures that show up on Facebook now. (One of Andrew's sisters actually added me on Facebook last night, and Andrew said he didn't want to know if his sister was getting virtual pink thongs from boys we don't know, which I could sympathize with. "Gods know what'll be on Chris's... oh, never mind." Gah. Anyway, it's exactly his sort of thing, is my point.)