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Subject: [Space] Sunday Afternoon Rocking
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 18:29:32 EDT
From: jan,
"The Season of Stories" (From the Sunday Afternoon Rocking series)
Afternoon All,
I had asked questions many times before, rarely receiving involved answers,
as if the past were past and there was really not much need in rehashing
it. But wanting to know, hungry for a glimpse of a world I had not known
and far different from my own, I persisted for years, when the opportunity
arose. I learned bits and pieces.
But one day I began to talk of someone she wanted to remember...
She brought out the locket first, almost shyly showing it to me. "Jud gave
me and Hazel each one of these before he went off to the war," she said.
Jud was my great uncle who had been killed in the Great War. In 1918, my
Aunt Helen and her sister Hazel were tiny girls, and it was sometimes hard
to reconcile the picture of the two round faced youngsters in his wallet
with the ladies I had known so long as my elders. Looking at the locket, I
recognized it, and remembered the necklaces those two tiny girls dressed in
the starched white summer frocks of a long ago day wore in that photo. I
remembered how in Jud's letters home he had asked for a picture of his
nieces, and realized that this photo must have come in response to that
request. They were photographed wearing the lockets he gave them when he
said good-bye.
As if the locket had in actuality been a lock and somehow a key had been
twisted that sprang wide the doors to another long ago world, Helen now
began to bring other things to show me. Over the few days I spent with her
I saw the postcards Jud had mailed the long ago little Helen from far away
places. I saw the tiny shoes a baby Helen had worn upon her chubby feet in
1910. I saw her mother's recipe book and heard her reminisce about the
grandmother I never knew. She pointed out a dish that I had long thought
very pretty, but never thought to ask the origins of, and she told me its
story. And so in the next several days, stories began to unfold that I
doubt sincerely she had ever shared before. You see, Helen had no children.
She had but two nieces, and I was the only one of those left.
For those of us with children, and grandchildren, I believe there comes a
day when we begin to want to pass on our stories, our roots. The tremendous
responsibility we feel in raising a child, smoothing their paths, showing
them the roads we feel are most "right" carries over into another way of
giving as we age. Most of us wish to give them roots, to share with them
the past we remember and make them feel a part of it. We want them to know
those we loved before they came to us, those they never had the opportunity
of knowing. And so we tell the stories, we bring out the bits and pieces of
our family past to show, to talk about. Sometimes we are listened to,
sometimes our words are politely brushed aside, and sometimes, sadly
enough, we realize there is no one that actually wants to hear. But for
most of us who have raised a child, the day comes when we try.
And so it was I realized what was happening with my aunt. I had grown into
what she was now doing long before, but then I had the opportunity of doing
so, having grown children. It came to me as I realized her newfound
pleasure in sharing, that this was actually the first time she had had such
a chance, and actually it was probable that she had never really felt the
need to do so before. There were no children she had needed to pass roots
to, she had never felt the pressing need of a parent or grandparent to do
so. Indeed, she had been confused at my questions of the past, not
understanding where a need to know of it was coming. Somehow the locket had
changed all that, and now she wanted very much to share. Humbled, I
realized that she was noting her own mortality, and trying to give
something that would live on...but had just recognized this was possible. I
recognized the blessed role I was being asked to play in her closure upon
the past.
We are all the same I think, though some of us feel that need to link our
families in a long chain of memories before others. Some of us note our
mortality more quickly than others, and some of us feel the pressing need
to bind our children to what has gone before more quickly than others. But
we are all the same. We want to know what we have known and loved will be
treasured by who we now know and love. We want to know our parents, our
grandparents will not be forgotten, and it begins to dawn on us that when
we are gone, perhaps no one else will live who knew them as we did, or
perhaps at all. For all of us there comes a time when we wish a sense of
closure, a knowing that what we have lived was important enough to be
remembered, that who we loved was meaningful enough to be treasured by yet
another generation. And so we begin to tell the stories, to pull out items
from the past, and we are anxious that these be heard. It pains us when we
realize our descendents either have not yet had time to grow into an
appreciation of such things, or their personalities seem to be such that
perhaps they never will. And we are thrilled when we find those who will
listen, who want to listen.
I have known both. And I have learned that two things seem to make the most
difference among those I wish had ears to hear. Maturity and experience
with life and mortality, a knowing that death is no respecter of persons
and life is short is the first. And the second is parenthood, somehow
having children of one's own awakens that need for a legacy of the past to
give them. And for those who have not yet grown into the knowing, I write.
The stories I tell and the stories that have been told for me will be
there, one day whether I am or not, and they will be treasured. I want no
descendent to look back as I have, and rue not listening when the
opportunity was yet there. And I know more than a few will grow into
wanting to know. For them the stories will still be there, in the words I
wished to tell them.
We are all the same, I think. We want to bring closure, we want to give a
legacy. But we cannot force a season upon those not ready to listen. We can
only write the stories, that these may be opened when the season comes,
whether we share that season or not.
Just a thought,
jan
Copyright ©2000JanPhilpot
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(Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be
shared...simply share as written without alterations...and in entirety.
Thanks, jan)
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