Making a family archive.

One of my father's books, a book of prayer letters, African Angelus written in 1950.

All day, on the day of our brother's birthday,  I have been in the company of  my sisters sifting through  hundreds of old  photos and letters and poems and manuscripts and copies of family trees and newspaper cuttings and our father's books. 

And reading our mother's letters out loud to each other. Her voice so clear on the airmail from...as if she was sitting with us at the table, telling us the story of their holiday with her sister in South Africa.

We are working towards a family archive stored in 7 purple lidded plastic boxes - in one place - my spare room, one sister's attic or one sister's studio.

But first we have to see what we have.

And it's a treasure trove of our ancestors' lives and loves and families and work...wondering who will want it when we, like them, are long gone.

The frontice piece of African Angelus - dedicated to his father

who "had the sun in him"

And just one random cutting in a scrapbook...

 a newspaper report about our father's protest fast in Westminster Abbey in  1968.  Our father, me and my middle sister in the photo. 

I was 16 and remember every detail and every feeling of that day and that night that we went up to join him.

So strange to think that life that I didn't know I was going to have has been lived now.

And one day I will be an ancestor too....a name on a family tree next to Robin's .... even with no descendants.