1951
I'll warn you now, this is a long post for the usual *woman of few words*
As someone who lived almost my entire childhood overseas, you'd think I would have no trouble coming up with a few great old photos, and a story or two to support my feeling, that a life lived with no wider global lens than is common to most American children, is a tragedy. Instead this is going to be a goofy tale of how Cheri gets an old photo onto this blog.
... So.. yesterday I start wracking my brain to figure out how to get a few of the ancient slides that I know exist in my Dad's computer in California onto my blog. Well that's going to be too complicated one e-mail at a time ... so...
Think, think, think...there are no albums or boxes of pictures from 60 years ago sitting around for me to rifle through and snap images onto my digital camera and transfer to the computer ( yes that's how I've been getting the oldies up) but I seem to remember a disk Dad left here a few years ago, labeled "France, Spain '50's"...Yes! OK now I think you put this disk in a drawer... got it! Of course there are SO many pictures on that baby (most of which aren't France and Spain) that my slow computer refuses to even take a glance . Have I mentioned that my 80- something Father is light years ahead of me on this computer thing? But he's not here and Russ has the nerve to be at work =( So most of the day yesterday was spent trying to get those pictures up on the screen. When I would finally get one ,I'd use my silly method of snapping it with my camera. Now I knew I at least had it where I could cope with the next steps...transfer to computer... re-size in the program Russ installed ( dial- up takes FOREVER to load regular size) then get on the Internet and fix each picture in* picnik*( this is the fun part) . I think I'll show the before and after on one of these.
Yes this is really my Dad-- not some movie star.
Happy birthday on Sat. Dad. Love you!
Have I mentioned that I also love picnik - first a little color adjusting to warm it up, then crop a bit, then 60's effect, then sepia with some color added back, then clone out some of the age specks, then frame with postage stamp, and add a caption.
Voila ! Today I have a handful of photos to prove that we indeed lived in some pretty interesting places once upon a time. And if I hadn't described all this in detail you might have gotten the mistaken impression that I had these darling postage stamp photos lying around all over the place.
Not so!
I owe a great debt of gratitude to my parents for being brave enough to leave these sunny shores and embark on the great adventure that was our life. For them to serve as missionaries in Portugal, Spain, Morocco, and Aruba, for the next 40 something years, takes true and brave hearts.
Strangely, my husband ( whose family were also missionaries) and I married, built a house on 20 acres and put down such deep roots that we hardly ventured across time zones much less international date lines with our 3 girls. I guess the adventurous spirit was all used up for us in our youth.
Sadly for our children then, we were only able to pass on the Global Perspective through tales and perhaps osmosis. The books I chose for our home library tended to also be set in foreign countries which is probably the second best way, besides travel , of getting a child out of their small world view.
If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. 
