Kathryn Elinor Lankford.

It was cold Thursday and so I didn't ride my bike. I didn't go outside, I didn't eat the popsicles that were sleeping in the fridge. I sat on the couch and tried to not think about homework, and searched, (from my seat on the sofa), for something interesting to do. I looked at the top of our book shelf and spotted the old metal tin that Heinz (yes, the ketchup) cookies came in, back in like, the 50's or so. They made cookies? Apparently. Tom had given it to us.

Tom lived across the street in a house that smelled of cigarette smoke, jalapeno peppers, and  liquor. I remember him as old, wrinkled, and, when I walked by his house, he would pluck a handful of peppers from his pepper plant, put them in his sweaty baseball hat that he was wearing and tell me to return his hat whenever. That's what I remember. I remember as he got older, he got crazy. His wife left, and soon he was lonely and so he said he was going to Colorado Springs, to look for gold. He had an old rusted over school bus there of which he'd live in. Get rich maybe. He was mad, but he was happy. Insane, but peaceful. He had more hope than most normal people I know. Before he left, he said I could take most anything from his house. I remember grabbing a couple yo-yo's, and the old heinz box. The box contained an antique, truly antique stereoscope from the 1890's. On thursday, I discovered the photographs I guess I had overlooked.

I pulled them out. They had 1943 scribbled on the back of them. They were all of the same woman- a bold woman, a happy woman, an outdoor adventurous woman. In the same loopy cursive writing: Kathryn Elinor Lankford, with the Kathryn having an -ryn ending just like me. Kathryn loved the ocean; that's where she smiled. I feel at home there, too. Most of her pictures were there. She played in rivers, barefoot, like me. Caught fish with a branch from a tree, like me. Played in the waves and smiled goofy, something like I'd do. I loved the pictures, and I felt a connection and they were beautiful. Kathryn Elinor Lankford was Tom's mother.
I scanned them- here they are: