In which I am reminded to pack hankies

Someone had the very good idea that we should all bring our favorite pictures of Mimi, so I went to The Box.

Mimi sent me The Box years ago: 2000, maybe? The address is in Liz's handwriting, and it was a box full of genealogical treasures. For years I thought of it with terror, especially the letter written from my great-great-great-grandfather William Fitzhugh Lee to his wife Lillie Parran Lee (whose admirer was JEB Stuart) advising her how to get safely past the Union lines. I put everything in archival sleeves, but I never really knew what to do with it all. Every time there was a storm, The Box went into the closet under the stairs. When we evacuated for Hurricane Rita, The Box was in the car with us, next to the box with the house deed and the tax files.

Then I had the brilliant idea to pack everything up and send it to my sister. Let her worry! She has a fire safe and just finished graduate school, *plus* she's not trying to work herself into writing a novel, so she has time to deal with it. Hooray!

But I kept the pictures: Hobie was still working at the photo shop, so we thought we'd digitize everything. Of course, within weeks he had his shiny new job. Perhaps someone else has a high-end scanner.

So I'll be taking Mimi's grandfather's family album (her grandfather Simpson, so there's a clue to the silver). The oldest picture has a note in Mimi's handwriting that says "1861 or 1862?"

Clearly I was premature in ceasing to worry about The Box.

The first picture I brought out was a picture of Mimi as a teenage counselor at Camp Ken-jocketee. The second was a picture of Mimi and Gogo from 1994 in which they're both laughing.

So I had a nice long cry. I had also put in there the book put together for Grum's funeral, and the folder full of stories and genealogies for Grandpop's parents. There is a long newspaper article from Memorial Day in the early 1990s about Grandpop's WWII service, with a 3x5 card from Grandmom about having to have a shot in her back and about missing me.

It's going to be a hard weekend, but good. I want to put as many puzzle pieces together as possible, to tell you lots of stories.