I was doing some backing up on my computer (aren’t I conscientious? Or maybe just really bored…) and came across some old photos of my maternal grandmother, Clara Josephine a.k.a. Nano.
She was supremely lovely, wasn’t she? Just full of old world charm, where the head tilt in a photograph didn’t look ludicrous and you could actually sign a photograph, “With best wishes” and give it to a beau. Now, all we do is tag photos on Facebook. How sad is that.
She looks really serene in these photos where in actuality, she was a firecracker of a lady, razor sharp and witty. Really bad at Math, though.
I did some futher digging and sourced a picture of her younger sister, Victorine Noelle. But her family called her Lynn. That’s right – she was Lynn Noelle. And the bizarre thing is that I was in no way named after her (I was hoped to be a boy, thus, Noel but oops, girl parts – let’s tack on an “l” and an “e”… Ok, it’s either that story or I was named after “Noelle Page” from the Sidney Sheldon book, “The Other Side of Midnight” – a woman who prostituted herself and later was left pregnant. You take your pick). She was quite tragically murdered when she was young, allegedly by a British soldier here at the time. How completely colonial.
I guess if you’re not too sure about where you’re going, it can’t hurt to see where you’ve been.