My Grandmother's Interest in Images of Children Playing

When I was a youngster, I would go to my grandmother's house and spend the night. It was always so much fun, and she was always so happy to see me. I remember she had a lot of pictures throughout her house and I also remember noticing that most of them were images of children playing. I decided to ask her one day why she had so many images of children playing, and she said it was to remind her of me and my siblings when we were away, but for other reasons, as well.

My grandmother told me that her favorite sound in the world was hearing children laughing. In all of the images of children playing that my grandmother had in her home, the children were laughing. She said that just seeing the young people laughing in the pictures reminded her of that sound. I remember that she used to sit out in the back yard with me and my brother and sister and watch us play, just to hear us laughing and having a good time, and I could tell it meant a lot to her.

I also learned that my grandmother kept images of children playing in her home because her father always liked having a houseful of children. My grandmother told me that her father was the nicest man she had ever known, and said he loved children because he felt that they kept him young at heart. She told me that she felt the same applied to her, and that because she could not be around us all of the time, she wanted to have pictures of children surrounding her to keep her in good cheer.

She said that she also liked to keep images of children playing around her home because her friends liked them. Apparently, she had shared those same stories that she told us with all of her friends, and every time they came over they would comment on all of her pictures. I was over there one time when they were playing bridge, and they talked about one of the pictures in particular for a long time. It was clear that they were all interested in the picture and liked it a lot.

The images of children playing meant a lot of my grandmother and she had them in her home until the day she passed away. She passed the pictures down to my sister, who still has them set up in her own home. She tells her own children about the stories our grandmother told us, so they will continue to live on to the next generation in our family.