A Time In Mom's Life Found In A Photo Album

      

     I've sat down several times to write this blog, but a feeling of sadness washes over me and I abandon the attempt.  It began when I was looking through a photo album I inherited from my late mother.  Actually, it was more like I stumbled upon it on a closet shelf while cleaning out the family home after my father had also passed.  The album was from the 1940's and as I leafed through it, I noticed the pages were beginning to deteriorate.  That couldn't be good for the pictures it held, so I began removing them, careful to keep them in order.

     I should note up front my mother had a more difficult life than most, and my feelings for her are colored by the empathy I feel.  At age seven she witnessed her mother fatally injured while filling the kitchen stove from a can of kerosine.  It exploded in her hands, blowing out a window and burning her terribly.  It's a miracle none of the children waiting for their breakfast were injured.  Their father remarried shortly after, to a younger woman who didn't want his seven children around.  They were sent to live with their grandmother, rarely to see their father who started another family. When my mother was thirteen her favorite sister died after a botched operation, even as Mom donated blood in an attempt to save her.  It seemed fate had finally smiled on her in 1945 when she married Dan, the man of her dreams, only to have that dream devolve into a nightmare when he was killed during the Korean War five years later.  Five years after Dan's death she married my father.  Without going into detail, it was not a happy marriage. 

     As I removed the photos from the album, I noticed writing on the backs of some of them.  One caught my eye; it was a picture of Mom with her brother Ken in full uniform.  On the back was written in part, "113 South 5th St. where our apartment was... on our way to Greenfield Lake".  Where was Greenfield Lake I wondered?  I knew my mother had married Dan, a career Marine, in Wilmington, North Carolina so I started there.  A Google Maps search for Greenfield Lake, NC brought it up, just outside Wilmington!  Another photo was exactly the same as the first one, only instead of Ken, it was Dan standing next to my mother, and this one was dated, 1945.  

Mom and her brother Ken Lash

Mom and Dan Carroll

     What were the odds the house was still there I wondered?  Now I was reasonably sure the city was Wilmington, I returned to Google Maps, where I did a search on the street address from the back of the photo--

     It was the house!  There was no mistaking the brickwork out front.  That spot on the side walk to the right of the steps is the exact spot where my mother had stood seventy-eight years ago.  Could it really be that long?  That's when I teared up a little and left this blog for another day.

     Returning today to hopefully finish the project, I found another photo taken the same day as the others.  It's of Mom and Dan in the bow of a small boat floating on, you guessed it, Greenfield Lake.  I'd bet it was snapped by my Uncle Ken also sitting in the boat.

Sgt. Dan and Mom, the skirt was red!

     I'm not sure why these photos have the effect on me that they do.  The people in them are young, happy, and in love.  The war in Europe is over, they all made it through, life is good and the future is bright.  Maybe it's because I know what lies in store for them, it's like a movie one has seen a dozen times but somehow you desperately want the ending to be different this time.  This time I want that can of kerosene to not explode; I want Mom's sister to have a competent surgeon; this time I want Dan to come home from Korea. What I really want is my dear mother to be happy.