Almost Back...

I've got my rough draft done of the digital photo albums (with explanations) of my mother and aunts' yellowed and tattered photos. It's about 60 pages. My brother and sister-in-law are checking for errors. I've also finished the rough draft of the stories my mother and aunts told me. That's an additional 20 pages. My "daughter-in-law in spirit" who was a reporter and assistant editor of a newspaper in New Mexico will now be editing those. I'm working on maps and finding additional data but overall, the bulk of the work is gathered. It's such a great feeling.

Through my mother and aunts' eyes I've seen such happiness, innocence, cruelty, depravity, insanity, fear, serenity, kindness, relief... every emotion you can name. For a while, my mother had nightmares and for a while I did, too. My mother tried to repress a lot of her memories, my aunt wanted it told. I believe they're all pretty satisfied and my mother feels good that I now understand what she's talking about.

It was always a goal for me to get the facts of her story and now I've done that. It's all so amazing to me. My brother and I could never quite get a complete understanding of what she was talking about when we were growing up and now it's all so clear. One of my cousins has said we'll have a Cousins Party to unveil what I've learned. I think they'll be surprised.

I am truly in awe of the information available on the web. I can hardly believe that I now know exactly where she was and the route her exodus took her and her family.

So I'm back... sort of. I do have to dust the house a bit. The bathroom... ahem ... needs to be cleaned.

And then I can start blogging a little again.