In retirement

When my dad retired from public school teaching 5 years ago, I wondered how he was going to fill up his time. My father has always been a very busy man (that's probably where I get it). He taught public school for 33 years or so, while holding down several professorships, playing in a symphony, managing and gigging with his own brass quintet, and doing extra gigs on the side. And somehow, he never missed one performance of mine.

Turns out, he keeps just as busy in retirement, but with much simpler things, like photoshop. He started a large project a few months ago, that should (hopefully) be ready by Christmas. He is scanning all of our family photos from around 1944- the present, and putting them onto CDs for my siblings and me. Photos of he and my mother that I have never seen before. Photos of me as a child that I do not remember. Photos of my siblings looking awkward as hell (I was lucky and didn't have an awkward stage ;) ).

It's hard for us to imagine our parents as young people, and remember that they were once our age, and faced many of the same challenges. My mom had already been married for 4 years and was having a baby at 27. I can't even imagine. Anyway, here are some of the gems my father recently scanned (note the use of photoshop in the caption):