Story Behind the Picture: Love Letters

My grandmothers spent years writing letters to my grandfathers as they fought battles on foreign soil. Their relationships survived on paper alone as they sent cryptic messages across the oceans to relay their locations and information: they developed codes to freely communicate without fear of letters being intercepted and censored. They sent photographs to one another, chronicling children's missed birthdays, holidays, and life lived by canteen and rifle. When my father's father was rescued by the French Resistance, his first duty was to write to my grandmother from his hiding place deep in the tunnels under the city. "I am safe..."

Letters held my family together, as they would a generation later when my parents were again separated by war. I treasure the letters left to me, creased and yellowed, carefully guarded in pockets, held close to hearts, read and re-read by dim lantern and firelight. Their written words alone bridged the endless miles and brought them home again.

Story Behind the Pictures: Spoon, Knife, and Fork

Memories. Memories come in the strangest of forms. I never met my great-grandmother, but her four daughters were an integral part of my daily life. They shaped my world, spoiled me, taught me, loved me. Of all the things they collected and treasured, the drawers full of their mother's tarnished silverware is the most beautiful. Of all the things they sold in order to keep food on the table and clothes on their children, they always protected the silverware. I refuse to polish away the patina and fingerprints, the years of use that have darkened the monogrammed "R" that adorns the graceful handles. I never met my great-grandmother, but when I look at these pieces of silver, I have memories of her Christmas dinners and Sunday lunches. I never met my great-grandmother, but her four daughters taught me everything I needed to know: love deeply, laugh loudly, and life is too short not to use the good silverware.

Story Behind the Pictures: Vintage Thread Series

My grandmother passed away this week. Rather than giving in to my selfish sorrow and lamenting that she is no longer with me, I've decided to remember her as she would wish: to remember the mischievous glint that often flickered in her eyes; to remember the acerbic humor that lay just beneath the veneer of proper lady-like behavior; to remember her limitless patience with me when she taught me how to use a needle and thread.

When I first moved to Philadelphia nine years ago, I really wanted to learn how to sew. I'm not exactly a crafty person, but my grandmother was such a gifted seamstress that I felt certain some of her talent must be latent in my genes. She was too diplomatic to ever tell me otherwise, but the gales of laughter she tried to suppress when I managed to stitch my own thumb to the fabric was definitely an indication. In my defence, she was teaching me on my great-grandmother's vintage Singer sewing machine (the very first electric model, just a step beyond the ones powered by foot pedal). It was temperamental and I was not very talented, but I loved the time we spent together at her kitchen table, laughing at the (not very impressive) fruits of my labor. Most of all, I loved the wooden spools of thread in her sewing basket: a rainbow of worn wood and colorful cotton that, when I look at them, remind me of all the dresses she made for me, for my mother, and for herself when she was just a girl. When I think of it, families are bit like my grandmother's sewing basket: a jumble of different colors, shapes, and sizes, all linked together by one common thread...love.