We have four closets in our 1920s condo. Two are normal, and two are weird. This is one of the weird ones.
Edited · 2d
Author: Ms. Snoop
ABOUT
I was lucky to be born into a family of genealogists, and to be gifted a family tree already bristling with names.
Along the way, other names have somehow found me.
My job is to listen to their stories.
Wayback Wednesday: Elise, Nancy, and Sarah
On Wednesdays we go way back. This week’s photo is my mom Nancy (the baby), between her mother Elise (left) and her grandmother Sarah (right).
I love unposed moments like this, when people were just being themselves. But I also can’t see it without some poignancy.
I know what they can’t: That Nancy would adore her grandmother, but struggle with her own mother, all their lives. She was caught between them here, and would be often as she grew up.
Sarah and Elise were actually stepmother/stepdaughter, and their own relationship was frosty.
There’s a lot of frustration in this photo. There’s a lot about love, mothering, disappointment, failure, and the ways we keep trying.
Socials
It’s been a while since I gave an updated list of all the spots where I hang out online.
- Threads: https://www.threads.net/@graveyardsnoop
- Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@GraveyardSnoop
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/graveyardsnoop/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MizSnoop
- Find-A-Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/user/profile/47156417
- And this here blog, of course: https://graveyardsnoop.com
Follow me, friend me, recommend me. Much appreciated! ☗
Best-Laid Plans
In 2023, the dead are a long line of impatient customers at the window.
I started this year with big and concrete genealogy plans. I went in so smart, with a limited and specific list of people to research. Just four things on it, and a chief goal to have my Detroit series wrapped up by Labor Day. Boy, hasn’t that one gone wanting?
They’ve all gone wanting because this year has been the opposite of me making the dead wait. In 2023, the dead are a long line of impatient customers at the window.
Continue reading “Best-Laid Plans”17210 Hull Street: Good Water, Cement Sidewalks (2)
1. Department of Corrections
This history of my family’s house on Hull Street—a house I saw only once, in a city I visited just a few times—is never going to be as right as I would like. Too much has been lost in the half-century since my family moved away. Perfect is not an option.
My family knows this as well. They’ve been utterly patient and helpful as I ask them to put a shovel into their old memories. After I published my introduction post, their responses shone with appreciation and added details. But one of my aunts did have a gentle change: “I loved it. But the peonies weren’t along the fence in the yard. I don’t remember where they were, but it wasn’t there.”
So much for my opening line about the peonies starring along the sidewalk fence. I took this news back to my dad, who had drawn me a map of the garden with the peonies there. He shrugged in response, saying, “The peonies were everywhere.”
Perhaps they were. Maybe they’re both right. A garden is forever in flux; memories are only correct for a moment. Memoir is where fact is layered on certainty, at right angles with another half-memory. The stories mesh or they don’t. They run in reinforcing parallels—or they cross each other out and leave you standing in between. The best I can do is overlay fact upon conflicting fact, and hope some shadow of truth appears in the crossing.
As it happens, the intersection is where we begin.
Continue reading “17210 Hull Street: Good Water, Cement Sidewalks (2)”
Graveyard Snoop 