1603. Lorraine tosses her bouquet

Lorraine’s wedding was more than an Instagramable Experience, it was a Facebook Sensation. More than one hundred and eighty-five thousand people had given her wedding pictures a like, to say nothing of the countless comments. People were so generous and loving when it came to messages of congratulation, even if they had never met Lorraine.

Wishing you every happiness in the future.

May God look down on thee.

This was a day in paradise to celebrate!

Of all the hundreds, in fact thousands, of messages, only half a dozen were mean and nasty. Lorraine scrubbed them from her Facebook page. It’s a free world, and she wasn’t going to have wizened-up cretins ruin her wonderful day.

The photographer was marvellous. A natural! He put Lorraine so at ease. Even the photograph when she had slipped a little on the grass when heading for the park where the photographs were to be taken… Lorraine had tossed her wedding bouquet in the air as she slipped. The bouquet was caught by the matron-of-honour, who also happened to be Lorraine’s best friend. All was captured by the photographer. In fact the photograph of Lorraine tossing the flowers into the air was the most liked snapshot of all. The photograph was one of those accidents where everything fell into place quite by… accident. The pièce de résistance! That one photo was possibly the reason why so many strangers had gravitated to Lorraine’s Facebook page for a peek and a comment.

The collection of photos captured the most perfect day in Lorraine’s life and she shared it with so many wonderful people!

Except Lorraine’s real name was Jeanette, and she and her friend had made the whole wedding thing up.

1575. Family photo album

Catriona had put a lot of work into her family photo album. It wasn’t so much an album; it was more a family tree. Each old photo was accompanied by a brief biography of who was who and what they had achieved in their lives. Catriona nonchalantly kept the album on her coffee table. Visitors would dip into it while Catriona was out in the kitchen making the tea and quickly baking a batch of edibles.

Here was a picture of her great great grandmother who single-handedly had confronted a whole tribe of warlike natives demanding money.

Here was a picture of a great uncle who used to ferry people in his rowboat, one person at a time, across the raging Lualaba River in the Congo.

Here was the highest in command saved when his ship was torpedoed in the war. That was her grandfather.

Here was…

Here was…

There is no doubt that Catriona’s ancestry was riddled with heroines and heroes. It was extraordinary how bravery can be passed on from one generation to the next. Was it Nature or Nurture?

“Perhaps it’s a bit of both,” Catriona would say, “although there are some people in my tree that are not yet in the album. If the truth be known, they were quite ordinary!”

Indeed! If the truth be known! The whole thing was a fiction in Catriona’s world. She had been adopted at birth. She had no clue who her biological parents were. Murgatroyd, a visitor from Little Ivywood Hamlet, pointed this out.

“Heavens to Murgatroyd!” exclaimed Catriona. “This is the family tree of my adopted parents. Family is not in the genes; it’s in the heart. And this is an album of my family.”

680. Nora remembers

Nora didn’t have any photographs of her mother, but she had two vivid memories of her. Nora’s mother had died when Nora was quite young.

One memory was of her mother poking her head around the doorway and saying “Peekaboo! Peekaboo! I see you!” The other memory was when Nora had tripped over. She looked up at her mother and her mother said “Whoopsie-daisy!” Nora remembered her mother’s eyes. She could see the colour of her hair; the style of her hair. She could see her smile; every inch of her face. She couldn’t remember what her mother was wearing, but her face was an indelible image forever etched in Nora’s memory.

And then… how exciting! One of Nora’s older brothers found a box of old photographs; a good half a dozen black and white photographs of Nora’s mother. There she is at the beach! There she is cooking on the camp fire! There she is… All were taken before Nora’s time. Nora didn’t know her then, of course.

But now something had happened. The photographs had replaced Nora’s memory. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember what her mother looked like.