Thursday, August 24, 2017

Brother Jake & Me With A Dad Photo Mystery

Saturday, August 12, 2017, after a ceremony at Lynden's Monumenta Cemetery, Aunt Judy invited those in attendance to her house for some pleasant relative time with tasty vittles, including a table with dad's favorite goodies, such as chocolate and cashews.

Aunt Judy and Uncle Mooch made two large photo boards, with dozens upon dozens of photos of my dad. Many of which I did not recollect previously seeing.

The following day, Sunday evening to be precise, Aunt Judy, Uncle Mooch, Aunt Jane, Cousin Amy and Amy's cute kid Kwan came to visit. It had been a long day with a lot of visitors, topped by the extremely enjoyable visit with the Uncle Mooch entourage.

Sometime around  midnight, my time, the Uncle Mooch entourage departed, but before doing so one of the large photo boards was given to us. The next morning I was tasked with removing the photos from the board so as to facilitate transit to Tacoma. Among those photos was a large one, in the center, of dad and his siblings, which I think was taken at a sibling reunion in Ohio earlier this century.

It was decided that I would take the large photo with me, to Arizona, to give to mom. When I arrived in Arizona and unpacked that which I had brought for mom, I was surprised to see two additional photos, photos I did not pack, that I had not been given to take to mom.

At the time I wondered how I came to have those two additional photos, but then thought nothing more about it, until the day before I flew back to Texas, that being Monday, August 21. On my last evening in Arizona I went  to my sister Jackie's place in Chandler. My brother, Jake was also there. Soon upon my arrival my brother gave me an envelope with a photo inside, which is the photo you see at the top.

With that photo being a montage of that big photo of dad I took with me to Arizona and the other two photos I accidentally took with me!

My brother and I have no idea how this happened. The next morning I located the three photos at mom's and took the photo you see below.


I then text messaged my little brother the photo I'd taken of the three photos he'd made into one photo, to which Jake replied, "That is beyond what I can make sense of. Think of the odds. It can't be a coincidence."

So, we have at least two mysteries here. One being how did I end up taking the two additional photos to Arizona, photos which matched those Jake made into a composite photo? Second mystery is what caused Jake to select those two additional photos to add to the big one of dad, from all the photos available, photos which matched  those two additional photos I inadvertently took to Arizona?

The photo on the right I can sort of understand why Jake chose that one. We had not seen a color photo, before, of the day mom and dad got married. In the color photo that is my dad's dad, dad's mom, mom, dad, mom's mom and mom's dad, well, step-dad, who was the only person I ever knew as grandpa.

The other dad photo, the one on the left, I think with dad in that photo is the aforementioned Uncle Mooch being the little guy in the foreground, with Uncle Ivan on the right.

The big photo which I delivered to mom has morphed into a new controversy in the last 24 hours. Apparently mom thought this was a painting of dad I brought from Washington, which has now disappeared. I have informed the photo searchers where I last saw this photo, that being the spot I returned it to after taking the composite photo you see above.

Items have a tendency, these days, at mom's, to disappear, and then reappear, at a new location, after mom reports them missing.

Or stolen....

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