Children's Room Contest for The Washington Post, photos by Andrea Bagdy Williams

Many items are handed down from the boy's great grandparents.  The coonskin hat once belonged to a great-Uncle, the desk was made by a great-grandfather and momentos were brought back from trips out north and west.

The lamp was made by the boy's great-grandfather using his father's cane.   The photo behind the lamp is of great-great-grandparents.

Quilts from family in Kentucky, the dream catcher and wolf mask from Alaska and Canada and family pictures decorate the room.

A room perfect for two boys.  Their parents painted the walls to reflect the outdoors. A friend, KB VanHorn,who runs Kokoleo Designs created the curtains from family quilt pieces.

Winter Doldrums

My kindergartner has been out of school since noon on February 5 through tomorrow, February 17 due to the winter snow storms that hit the DC area. I love snow. I love my family. I love fires in the fireplace, but this is a little much. It’s given me time to clean some things out, which is needed and therapeutic. It has also given me too much time with my own thoughts. I need to embark on a new project.

I worked at a furious rate on putting together photos of my mother-in-law, Gail the week after she died. It gave me a purpose and was cathartic. Everything happened so fast during those several weeks as she declined and then as we readied for the funeral and hosting family. Ryan’s father and Grandmother departed when the first snowflakes began to fall. Suddenly we were left with three feet of snow and dying funeral flowers.

A week prior to Gail’s death, my mother handed me a banker’s box full of my father’s collection of photos from his youth in Hungary and later California. Ryan was gone, saying his goodbyes and supporting his family and I was left home with two sick children. I began to look through the box, telling myself I’d look through just one envelope of pictures. The next thing I knew I was sorting them by era, subject matter and researching my Grandfather’s business connection with John Lloyd Wright, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sons. I began scanning photos that my cousin, aunt and brother would appreciate including my parent’s wedding photo. I had never seen it before and thought my mother looked sophisticated in her pink pillbox hat. I emailed it to her and she told me not to show it to anyone since she looked horrible in it.

The project was interrupted by Gail’s decline and all the emotions that come with losing a loved one. So, I guess this is as good a time as ever to pick up the Bagdy Family Photo Project. My cousin, Alethea, knows other family members in Hungary that may be able to assist with recalling who are in these photos if my father adn aunt are unable. Maybe at some point once these images are digitized we can collect all of them in a book, for the surviving members of the family. In the meantime it gives me a good project to work and the purpose I need to keep me going until springtime.

A Moment in Time

This summer I found a roll (really a disc) of film in a camera from my teen years. To have it developed would mean sending it away to a photo lab in Pennsylvania and paying way too much money for it. But after speculating as to what was on this camera (circa 1987) and pressure and support from various people I decided to pay the money and find out. In the process I began looking through my collection of old cameras, which now totals nine, and found two rolls of film from my grandparents Platt 1963 Kodak Instamatic, one still inside. Then to my surprise I discovered a roll of film that was still in their 1933 Kodak Brownie. I carefully rewound the film in the Brownie and taped it closed. I found a pretty and strudy box to mail these mysteries in and soon they were off to Pennsylvania.
The package arrived this week and just like opening a time capsule, I quickly yet carefully opened it not knowing what I would find. I was disappointed to see my own camera disc was blank, as well as a few of the other rolls, but I then pulled out the prints. They were able to retrieve photographs from two rolls of film from two different cameras. When I pulled the first picture out I exclaimed to my five-year old son, who was in the room with me, “That’s me!” Indeed it was a photograph of me on my Granddaddy’s lap doing one of my favorite things, riding the tractor. The rest of the 19 images were of that day at his little farm with my brother and Granddaddy’s dog Panda or of my brother’s trip with the grandparents to the Midwest to see Herbert Hoover’s Presidential Library. They were all grainy black and white images printed in the square format popular in the 1960s. And one photo in particular, of Hoover’s birthplace was especially pictorial, with the quaint picket fence surround the small white clapboard house.
The roll of film retrieved from the 1933 Brownie contained only two photos most likely taken in the 1960s. They were taken almost as a test or a simple documentation of a mundane task. Maybe my grandparents were debating whether to continue to use the camera. They never threw things away. The photos show my grandfather washing his car, with the neighbor’s house in the background. My grandfather is dressed in a button down short sleeve shirt and long pants; casual wear for that time period.
I can only assume my grandmother was the photographer of all these photos, since she does not appear in any of the pictures, yet was most certainly by my grandfather’s side. This is unusual, as I remember my grandfather being the photographer, not her. My grandparents are gone now, so I can’t ask them about the photos or the cameras. I only wish I had developed these pictures several years ago before Grandmama passed away. She would have enjoyed them.

So no, I didn’t find anything outrageous or dramatic on these rolls. But sometimes the most important times in a person’s life are not the fancy parties or expensive vacations, but the simple days of sitting on a grandparents lap and learning to drive a tractor, petting the family dog, or simply washing the car.