Childhood as Writing Inspiration

Every Tuesday for the past six years I have met with my Writers Inspiration Group at the local bookstore. The group is based on the book Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg in which she suggests free-writing from a prompt. No editing, no plans, no thinking:  just letting words flow onto paper or laptop screen as they come.

Some Tuesdays I lead the group and last week I had my prompts ready to go but then I was scanning my Blogroll and came to The Sum of All Crafts by Valerie Brincheck. Valerie always shares wonderful vintage photographs and images. I've used quite a few in my art journals but I hadn't really thought about using them for my writing group, until I saw this photo:

I HAD to make copies and take them in for the group to write stories about. I printed a few out on regular paper, enough for every two people to share a copy. I passed them around and the group knew exactly what to do;

I passed around copies of the photo, just printed on regular paper, nothing special and the pens lifted and away they went.

The group was entranced by the detail's and not only the child size furniture but the doll size furniture.

Yes, it's a great photo but I quickly realized that I have a completely different attitude to it because I'm a historian and genealogist. I'm used to scenes like this including this one of my mother and her siblings.

That's my mother at the table on the left. She was the eldest and grew up loving to cook, take care of babies and entertain.

I have more photos like this but I have to find them. Meanwhile, what story can you come up with for one of these photos?