Hayley Johnson Photography {Inactive}

Wow!!! I opened my email this morning to find quite a few comments on my iHeart faces entry {this post}, that were in fact congatulating me on being awarded second place!!

I must say, being that it is my first entry, it took me completely by surpise!

Thanks to Jose Villa who was this week's judge and a most brilliant and inspiring photographer, and of course, thanks to iHeart faces and all of the people who kindly left comments on my post!

Thanks so very much!

Just this past weekend a dear friend sent me the link to a gorgeous website {http://www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com/} that she thought I would enjoy... and boy was she right!! ilove faces is just a fantastic concept where amateurs and professionals {and anything in between} can showcasse their interpretation of the given theme... What fun!!!

Well, the result is this - today I am entering one of my photos into the weekly themed photo contest!

I thought that perhaps a photo from Fiona's Nostaligia shoot would be perfectly fitting for a Nostalgia themed contest...

While my photo might seem to be more of a modern representation of times gone by than something that would give me personally, a feeling of nostalgia... there is something much more personal behind these photos than most would ever know and I guess today would be the perfect day to share...

But, it's a long one... So grab your coffee and get comfy for a few minutes!

...........................

My sister Fiona is actually the first born grandaughter on my stepfather's side of the family, and fittingly, she has always taken after her Granmother, in so many ways ~ most obviously in her physical appearance.

Grandma was a very attractive young woman!

As we look back through the albums we see 20 something Grandma and Grandpa so in love, so happy and surrounded with their 4 beautiful children.

I remember whilst growing up that it was never quite possible to grasp my Grandparents as that young couple... filled with all of the hope and joy of the world.

I had never known my Grandparents to be that happily married couple.

They had divorced so long before I knew them.

Just as I had never known them to be the proud parents of four small children who adored them, as those days had long since passed and their children had grown.

As we flick through the albums of days gone by, the resemblence is just so obvious... haunting... my sister resembles her Grandmother so very much, more so than any other in the family... her face, her build, her mannerisms.

An old cardboard suitcase with rusted metal clips now rests on the top of the wardrobe...

Inside are an antique tortoise shell and an antique cuckoo clock carved from oak...

Wrapped in a newspaper from many years ago...

Evidence of a past long forgotten...

Happier days...

The days when Grandma was still here...

When the clock was mounted upon the retro wallpapered dining room wall...

When the tortoise shell hung on the back veranda...

Of days when we would all play together in her yard...

When she would take us on a personal tour of her garden, filled to the brim with Staghorns that had grown upon the old palm tree for many years before we were ever here...

with pumpkins and choko vines...

When she would take clippings from everything that we said was pretty...

and she would prepare them and send them home with us...

In our suitcase.

Then came the day...

The old train station...

In the city...

When we boarded together...

as a family...

Homeward bound...

A quiet journey...

a long, sad journey...

For those days were final...

Our last journey home from Grandma's home...

For we had bid her a heartbreaking final goodbye some days before...

When we had put her to rest...

and we had packed the antique giant tortoise shell and the cuckoo clock, wrapped in old newspaper into an old cardboard suitcase...

and we placed it on the top of the wardrobe...

No need to open the rusted metal clips...

Because we will always remember...

One glimpse at the old cardboard suitcase,

one deep breath of the air that would fill our nostrils and lungs with the aroma of antique book papers and a smell that only Grandmother's houses have...

will have us standing right back in Grandma's dining room...

Where we never have to say goodbye.

And, so here is a photo of my sister, the oldest Grandaughter... with an old cardboard suitcase with rusted metal clips...

Nostalgia