My mother-in-law once embarked on a project to keep her family’s history alive. She spent hours each week attempting to complete the family tree as far back as possible. She turned her dining room table into a kind of office in which she intended to label all of the family photos that she had. Because she was born with a heart defect and told by doctors that she would not live a long life she felt almost frantic about getting the job done. Sadly she never quite achieved her goal before she had a massive stroke that left her in a coma and ended in her death.
My father-in-law grieved for a time and mostly left the remains of his wife’s research sitting where she left it. Eventually he pulled himself together enough to get back into the world of the living. Before long he had fallen in love with a new woman that he would marry. Much of the work that his first wife had undertaken was shoved into boxes and drawers never again to be noticed until he too died.
Now there is a kind of urgency in both me and my husband to fulfill the dream of his mother in becoming historians of each of our families. It is a daunting task that seems to consume more time than we have, but we understand that if we do not at least attempt to tell the stories of the people who came before us they will soon become unknown.
I admittedly recall having little or no interest in the ramblings of the generation older than mine whenever they attempted to enlighten me about members of the family that I had never known. I only became truly interested in those stories after I had retired from teaching. By then the very people who might have been able to provide me with more information were gone and so I was on my own in recreating the stories of people who to a large extent mean nothing to my children and grandchildren. They are simply names without the flesh and blood stories that individualized their importance in the grand scheme of the world.
I find myself thinking more and more of the people who played such important roles in helping me become who I am today. Like my mother-in-law I desperately want the generations behind me to know their stories. I attempt to rebuild their vitality with tales and anecdotes that are still so lively to me but seem to strike the young folk as having nothing to do with them. I want everyone to understand that where we are in this moment was not just an accident but was part of a long line of effort by people on our family tree who worked to provide good lives for themselves and those that they loved.
My husband and I have begun digitizing photos while also naming the people in them on the back of the original pictures which in some cases are already fading. I have written a memoir dedicated mostly to my mother that I hope my descendants will one day choose to read. Nobody in that story stands out as being particularly unique or exciting or famous but each of them were important in leading to where every member of our family is today. If I don’t spread the word about them they will one day become part of the millions of unknown people who have walked on this earth.
I often find myself wishing that so many of them were still here. I suppose that I was much like my descendants in having little or no interest in spending time cataloging the essences of their lives. It sometimes feels difficult to be forward thinking while looking at the past but I understand the incredible connections of both ways of looking at the world.
I have become a great fan of Heather Cox Richardson whose daily letters weave history with the presence. She has demonstrated how interconnected we are with the people and events of the past while also being informed of the present. When I read her essays I think of my grandfather who seemed to understand how we learn so much by looking at the past. He often spoke of growing up during the time of the robber barons who controlled so much of the power and wealth of the nation at the end of the nineteenth century. He insisted that the good old days were evolving in the present by learning from mistakes of the past.
Sadly we humans tend to either reach for the moon of the future or languish in a kind of fantasy of how wonderful the past always was. A true analysis of both our history and the present moment helps us to see how hard our ancestors worked to bring us to a time when freedoms are sometimes threatened more by our fears of looking both ways at the same time. We need to understand how we got where we are while also mapping out a future that moves forward with the best aspects of our humanity.
The young people of today are wonderful. I know this because I have known them in my efforts to teach them. They are much like the generations of the past, individuals who on the whole have always wanted the same things. By getting to know everyone along the road of life we come ever closer to creating a world that honors everyone. This is what I have learned from those stories of people in my mother-in-law’s family and my memories of the people in mine. There is a goodness in humans that time and again comes to the fore and overtakes those who would limit the scope of our relationships with all of the people of the world. I plan to keep telling those stores much as my mother-in-law tried to do. Our history is as important as what will happen next.
