The duct tape across the spine is what captivates me. It’s not some pristine, museum-quality artifact, but a real, hardworking book that’s been hauled through moves, passed around at dinners, and leaned on for years. To anyone else, it's a worn-out tan binder, but to us, it’s a physical vault. It holds the kind of information that digital files just can't touch the stuff you can actually feel under your thumb.


When I flip open the binder, I’m not just looking at pictures, I'm stepping into rooms I’ve never been in, yet somehow recognized. I see that woman in the dark dress sitting on the bright orange sofa looks like she’s enjoying herself. Like the shot of a woman in a big, dark armchair, probably the best seat in the house. People dressed in white, standing in a wood-paneled room that smells like Sunday dinner and history.


We live in a world where a phone glitch can wipe out a decade of memories in a second. That's why this book matters so much to me, it’s a rescue mission. Those square polaroids, like the one of a woman standing in front of that massive floral clock, are proof that our ancestors were here, they were happy, and they lived lives worth remembering. Every time I touch these yellowed pages, I’m making sure their names don’t just fade away into the background. It’s our story, taped together and preserved, one photo at a time.

 

– LW

Relationship:  Grandchild of im/migrant Grandchild of im/migrant