I'm back...

...and jetlagged (though not as jettlagged as Jetlag Boy, who is sound asleep at 10:30 am and no, it's not his morning nap, it's the second half of his night, silly, since he fell asleep at 01:00, which is right on schedule, that being 6pm in Chicagoland) and fuzzy and hazy around the brain. I'm behind on blog-reading, slowly emerging from a news blackout (what? Roger Federer lost a tournament? Sharon left Likud? The Gentech ban passed in Switzerland? When did all of this happen?), and making up a grocery list. I'm turning essays around in my head, and blog posts, inspired by the treasure trove of family photos I looked at all too briefly and now must wait for my brother to pack and ship over to me before I see again. Procrastination being an S. Family trait, I don't expect to be signing for them any time soon, so I took a representative handful back with me. I already wish I had taken more. Among those I took is a photo of my mother looking impossibly glamorous on Christmas, 1953, and one of my father taken in Rome in 1958. A wedding photo. My mother on the couch with infant me and my 3-and-a-half year old brother. Me in my father's arms in September, 1970. Judging from the date and the background, we can only be sitting poolside at The Three Bears in West Yellowstone, Montana. My mother helping my brother walk riverside at Warm Springs (Sun Valley/Ketchum, Idaho) and then there is the photo that captures my father, my childhood, my longings. He is sitting on the banks of a river showing off a trout. On the back of the picture, in my mother's script, it says "The Madison." It was taken in September, 1966. Forty years. Forty years my family has been sitting on the banks of the Madison River.

Of the photos I left behind, there are countless unlabeled photos of my mother's side of the family. A few are tantalizingly labeled in Swedish. Or say simply "Jens, 17 years." Who are these people? What happened to them? Where are they now? I want those boxes to arrive, I want to sift and sort and dig and piece together the past. For now I can only wait, catch up on some sleep, and send out this piece of advice. If swisslovebaby's battle cry is "back up your work!" mine is "label your photos!"