Yesterday afternoon, I went down the rabbit hole of looking at old photos. I’ve mentioned before that I lost a whole photo album of old photos of me that Mom put together for all of her kids many moons ago. Still, for reasons probably having mostly to do with technology now allowing us to download and share photos, I have my fair share of growing-up photos. I begin by looking at one, and pretty soon an hour has passed.

I came across this photo…..

The photo includes me, my sister Jen, and my brother Dave. I have no recollection as to why my mother spent what was probably a good chunk of her morning bundling the three of us up so that she could lean us against the wall of the back of our house and snap a photo. All I can say is that, from the looks of it, my brother was none too happy. I can’t say I blame him because he reminds me of Randy in A Christmas Story, who was bundled for the Indiana weather and couldn’t get up when he fell down. I also suspect that his hat was knitted by my grandmother and the boots were probably two sizes too big so he could grow into them. It’s probably why 15 years later he moved to Arizona and never looked back.

I love to write stories in my head for pictures, but I’m having trouble writing the story for this particular shot. We definitely weren’t just going out to play in the snow. Jen’s and my coats are too fancy. I’m not afraid to tell you that I wish I had that very coat today, because I think it’s adorable. Mom bought cute clothes for us when we were children.

It’s possible we were about to walk to school. Like Ralphie and Randy in the aforementioned movie, we walked the seven blocks to school. I’m guessing our ages, and I’m putting me at about 9, Jen at about 5, and Dave at about 3. That, too, could have caused the frown on his face. His little 3-year-old brain might be thinking, “I’m too young for school. I was perfectly content laying in front of the television set watching Captain Kangaroo before I was needlessly put in this humiliating position.”

Nebraska winters were/are cold. You can see in the photo the pile of snow in the background. What you can’t see are the icicles that were undoubtedly hanging from the gutters of the house and the garage, waiting to fall off and hit one of us. Bring on the tears.

I wish that Mom was here to tell me her memories of that picture taken so long ago.