New Year’s Baby – 1913

Don’t throw the past away
You might need it some rainy day

“Everything Old is New Again”, co-written by Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager

Happy 2020! Have you already had to cross out the “19” and correct it to “20” when writing the date? (I have caught myself doing this a few times already). Curiously enough, just as we move into a new year ‘for real’, I find that I’ve displayed all my album pictures from 1912 and can move into a new year in the album: 1913.

New Year’s Day 1913 was especially important because my paternal grandmother, Marjorie E. Dunning, was born. 1/1/13. I haven’t confirmed it but I’m pretty sure her middle initial stands for Eleanor, her mother’s name.

Besides being the coldest of the month in the Northern Hemisphere, January always comes with a special sort of malaise. You’ve spent too much on the holidays and now find you need to replace the furnace (anyone?) You’ve had a mediocre year-end review and are yet enhanced to further enhance the value proposition in 2020 (show of hands?)

When I think of January, I can’t help thinking of the vulgar refrain “same sh__, different day” except it’s “same sh__, different year.” And yet. There are those among us who embrace this month with the opposite attitude. Calmness, cheer, pleasure, well-being…resolutions are made and gyms fill up.

I wonder if the fact that my grandmother was born in January changed the conception of that month forever in her mind, and in Eleanor’s. Maybe it felt natural for them to view January as a hopeful beginning. Thinking about the new year and these baby pictures of my grandmother, the phrase that came to me was “everything old is new again.”

Everything old is new again. One interpretation could be the marketing one, where styles are rehashed after a period (high-waisted jeans, for example?) In fact, the cover of the Pottery Barn magazine this month features a ‘Round Milk Glass’ chandelier which I immediately recognized as similar to the gasolier from my earlier post.

“Inspired by a European antique, the Callahan Collection has a sleek sensibility and statement-making style that echoes the original.“

The other way to think of the phrase is to look at the same thing but with a change of perspective. Everything old is new again. I knew my grandmother as an old woman but here she is as a baby. The photo is from 1913 but it’s new to the mind of every single person who sees it.

The trick of January, I think, is figuring out how to look at the same things in a new way so that the impression you’re left with is one of possibility and opportunity rather than the “same sh__”. Or as an actress I read about in the NYT yesterday put so nicely, “…to look at the future not as a daunting bleak abyss of hell, but an exciting adventure”.

One new perspective I get seeing these pictures of my infant grandmother – baby Marjorie – is that maybe the utilitarian part of her was there even before she became aware of her surroundings. She’s bundled up and stuck in what looks like a wooden box because…I suppose…it was a practical way to keep her upright.

Then again, she was born a Capricorn and I can confirm that she exhibited a number of Capricorn-like traits. Clear-eyed, down-to-earth, a hard worker, practical, disciplined, stoic. She loved gardening and reading (both things that Capricorns are prone to doing). I know astrology isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I always find it fascinating.

The other gigantic happening on my grandmother’s birthday was the beginning of the Parcel Post (of the U.S. Postal Service). On January 1, 1913, food, dry goods, drugs and other commodities began to be delivered. This was an especially big development for the country’s rural residents (54% of the U.S. population in 1910).

To think that today I get itchy trying to wait two whole days for my new furnace’s filters to be delivered.

I look forward to sharing more 1913 pictures with you this year and hope you are starting 2020 on a positive note!