The Olive Branch Disaster

My family experienced a major disaster, back in Scotland, in 1936. My father's father was already here in the US, but his brother, father and several cousins were aboard this fishing boat, when it was overtaken by rough seas, killing all the men on board. My grandfather too, would have been on that vessel, if he hadn't come to the US with my grandma several years prior to the tragedy. This was one of the reasons they came, so he could do something better than work as a fisherman (really the only industry in North Sea Scotland at the time).

A few years ago, I spent a month living with my grandma, while I completed a literature residency. I wrote poems based on my family history, as told to me by my grandmother. It was a life-changing experience. I saw my grandma, for the first time possibly, as someone other than just my grandmother ( a feisty, sometimes defiant teenager for instance, who bobbed her hair and pinned up her skirt above the knee). Every day I would go off and write, and when I came back, she had new clippings, letters, photos, and mementos to show me. Every night after dinner and tea, we'd sit down and she told me the stories behind the items she'd pulled from her own personal archive.

One thing that I did, which I hadn't planned, was to take photographs of her photographs. I wanted to have those photos for myself, and this was the only way. My father built a camera stand that made it so you could take photos of objects or photos, without a flash. So on nice days, I'd take the stand and my camera and her photo albums outside. At the end of the month, I had enough poems to fill a book, and enough photos to fill a new album.

I've always wanted to combine the photos somehow, with the poems, but didn't think of how until recently. I'll post the results here.