Little Meesh Muffet: flashback

Although you couldn't quite call this a retrospective post, as I never met my great-great-aunt Martha, I must have heard her name hundreds of times in my childhood. The dumb kid that I was, however, for the longest time thought it was actually "Ahntimaatha" and not, you know, Auntie Martha. (To this day I am not entirely sure why my family drops the "r" sound for this Martha only.)

This particular photo stood out to me, not because it apparently ended up in the paper, but because Martha is looking pretty damn gorgeous here. I don't have a date for this photo, but based on the styling and her probable age, it's clearly sometime in the 20s. That's one of my dream style eras for a reason, people. This whole look is just so soft and glamorous.

You can see closer details (and probably read the newsprint better) in the larger version.

FADE IN:

1 INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT

MEESH LOUNGES AGAINST A PILE OF PILLOWS, HER KNEES TUCKED UNDER HER CHIN, SLOWLY TURNING THE PAGES OF A WEATHERED, YELLOW-PAGED PHOTO ALBUM. A SUNHAT HANGS IN THE BACKGROUND. SHE SUDDENLY PAUSES ON A PAGE, HER EXPRESSION AMBIGUOUS. A BREEZE FROM THE OPEN WINDOW LIFTS HER HAIR.

CAMERA TIGHT ON MEESH AS SOUNDS FADE IN -- WAVES CRASHING, SEAGULLS CALLING, A BABY LAUGHS -- THEN CUT TO:

2 EXT. BEACH - DAY

I kid, I kid. I'm currently scanning my grandparents' photo albums for posterity (and will probably do my parents', too, as no one has seen fit to swap out the old albums for new, non-photo-destroying ones.) There are some amazing things in there, from turn-of-the-century portraits of great-great-grandparents to 50s Polaroids to the 80s Polaroids of my childhood, as seen above. Most of these are in decent condition, although there's a few that look like someone let a baby chew on them. (And there are some fantastic clothes, so you can bet I'll be making more flashback posts every now and then.)

These pics caught my eye because we've been making sure our beach gear is ready for summer. We do CT's public beach thing now, but when I was young, my parents and grandparents would rent a cottage at a private association's beach in Old Lyme for a few weeks every summer. Many of my best memories happened there. When my grandmother died, this tradition ended. Went back once for old times' sake when in college. Things had changed.

(Am I really seeing rental listings at 3k/week for some cottages? I am pretty sure we rented for $800/wk back in the 80s. Hot damn.)

I still miss the hell out of that place, though.