Tonight is the live ATC swap at Mystic Paper and the theme is “Summer”. I got the idea that I’d like to do a card with snapshots of my happy summer memories and started a mental checklist of what should be included.

One of my earliest summer memories is visiting my grandmother on her farm and “swimming” in her galvanized wash tubs. In my mind I could see my sisters and I, three blonde bathing beauties. When we were older we lived within walking distance of a private lake and I spent as much time there as I could floating around in my giant inner tube. When we couldn’t go to the lake there was the thrill of running through the lawn sprinkler or sitting on the curb waiting for the Good Humor Man.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any photos to go with my memories or my ATC plan. I decided to search the internet for images that might help me recreate the memories. To my great surprise and pleasure I found exactly the right photos. If you squint your eyes just a little the girl in the inner tube and the three blonde bathing beauties could easily be me and my sisters. I didn’t find a mini me running through the sprinkler but I did find an unknown twin of my son! I hadn’t really planned on hijacking someone else’s photos in this way. I was thinking I’d find generic images of sprinklers and inner tubes without the children. These were just so perfect that I decided to work with them and hope really hard that the owners wouldn’t be too upset.

The more I think about my luck in finding these images the more deeply I feel a connection to these other people, and to all people. For all of our differences we are really all pretty much the same. Day in and day out we do the same things, think the same thoughts and have the same feelings.