Nostalgia

When my Dad's side of the family got together to celebrate Meemaw's life, naturally we got out a pile of old photos and started reminiscing about our favorite memories with her. Now, anyone that knows me knows that I love love love pictures, especially old pictures that have an authentic vintage look, and so I was really excited to have a chance to see family photos dating all the way back to the 1800s (yeah, amazing). I wanted to share a few of my favorites with you just because (1) they light up my brain and (2) it might just inspire a trip down memory lane of your own...

{Taken in the 1800s, my great-great grandmother is the one holding the child by the fence. The fact that I have this photo on my computer on a blog two hundred years later just blows my mind.}

{My great-great grandmother is the third one from the right. She had the most southern of southern names, Gussie Pearl!}

{L-R: My grandmother Lillian and great-grandmother Mary Lou (joined together in heaven now), standing with my grandmother's Uncle F.M. and apparently a dog.}

{Meemaw was a contestant in a beauty pageant at Georgia Southern, she sure was beautiful! They had the left photo framed in their house, and I used to stare and stare at it when I was little, dreaming of wearing a big, beautiful gown and feeling like a southern belle.}

{Meemaw witnessed many graduations: obviously her own from high school, my Dad's from UGA's Vet School, and my Mom's from undergrad when she got her BSEd. Pawpaw is wearing a robe as well because he was a UGA professor of Ag Education at the time.}

{And now a few photos of the lovebirds...Pete + Lillian Dickerson :D}





{The love of a grandmother is irreplaceable. You can see it in the look in her eyes with all three of these photos. I'm on the left, top-right is my sister Ashley, and bottom-right is my brother Drew.}

{From her own children to her grandchildren, there was no place like Meemaw's lap.}





{Halloween! My cousin David as a mummy never fails to crack me up.}





{Meemaw was always so supportive of us, pictured here at one of Drew's baseball All-Star games and my tennis senior night in high school. And yes, I did the whole tie-your-t-shirt-in-a-scrunchie-thing. Who didn't? ;)}

{Celebrating Meemaw + Pawpaw's Golden Anniversary at Uncle Chris + Aunt Melanie's house.}

{Growing up...Thanksgiving 2006. When Kyle met the family!}

{The entire family at Meemaw's 80th birthday party, the last time we were all together before she passed.}

And now for some of my personal favorites from Dad's side of the family:

{Party in the jacuzzi! I especially love how freaked out Drew looks.}

{My cousin Brian and me at Fernandina Beach.}

{Ashley "picking cotton(?)" at Grandma Lou Lou's plantation.}

{Probably my all-time fave of Ashley, Drew and me.}

Nostalgia – it’s delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.

-Don Draper, Mad Men