Non-financial wealth: family history

[John Holzmann]

As I suggested in my post, above, I think of One Memory at a Time as a kind of "coaching" book for To Our Children's Children. And it is beautifully written, very practical, and highly encouraging. Indeed, I am so taken with both books (don't tell anyone, but . . .) I am planning to give a few sets to certain relatives of mine for Christmas presents this year.

So you can get an idea of what One Memory at a Time is all about, let me quote a bit from the book. Much of this I sent in an email to my dad last night.

I included this in my email to my dad because it seems he gets bogged down on the niggly details: "What date was that?" (I mean, literally, down to the day--for stories having to do with events that happened in the 1930s, '40s and '50s.) More often than not, he won't proceed with a story unless he has the exact day correct . . . and he feels confident he has included a reference to as many people as possible who may have been present for whatever event it is he is thinking about--whether they are central to the story or not.

As you can imagine, such a sense of obligation keeps him from telling most stories. . . . Well, I thought this, what Fulford has to say (on pp. 41-43), is pertinent to my dad's affliction:

A family tree hangs on the wall beside the bed my daughter slept in. It is a semi-elaborate work, drawn in gold and royal blue ink. It was presented to my grandmother, my Nana Amy, for her 80th birthday, I think. It is actually more a chart than a tree, a chart consisting of squares filled in with names that diverge and connect with each other.

I've been looking at these names for years now: Adolph and Blanche, Rosa and Abraham, Morris and Anna, Frances and Allen, Eliza and Aaron, Henry and Molly, Amelia and Max. Amy and Alfred and Milfred and Ruby, Rosina, Rosa, Cora, Flora, and the poor baby girl who died at birth.

That's what they've been. Names. Names in squares. Not people. This is a geometric way to look at family, reminiscent, it has always seemed to me, of the way we used to diagram sentences in school.

If Eliza and Aaron were the noun, were Alfred and Amy the verb? Was Uncle Mif the dangling participle?

This is why the stories are important. They put faces and actions and personalities to the names. They animate the squares.

My great-grandmother was Blanche. . . . Blanche was literate and capable, according to my mother's written history. "Not to be trifled with," she writes. "Does that sound familiar?"

Yes, it sounds familiar. It describes my mother's mother, my Nana Amy, Blanche's eldest daughter, to a T.

Blanche’s son, my Nana's brother, remembers his mother as small, her features quite regular. "She expressed her love for us in a quiet way and we regarded her highly for her assumption of both the father and mother role that became hers at a young age. Forty-six if my calculation is correct."

[Blanche's husband, Adolph] would have been 50--my age--on April 13, 1914. Blanche had planned a party for him. He died on April 9, four days before his birthday. . . .

Blanche's friends where Stella, Tillie, Hattie, Jennie and Ida, Mink, Fanny and Eliza. Eliza became my great-grandmother, too. Her son, Alfred, married Amy, my Nana.

This I know from Nana's sister, my aunt Rosina, who we called RoRo.

"By the way," RoRo wrote, "the ladies called each other 'Mrs.' for a long time after becoming friends."

A different era, a whole other time. I can see the ladies, Tillie and Stella and all the rest, arriving at a friend's porch or entry hall, wearing clothes and hats and calling out for "Mrs."

These are the things you don't get from a chart or a family tree. The images, the history lessons, the character sketches, the customs. For these, you need the memories someone has had the benevolent foresight to write down. . . .

With these thoughts in mind, Fulford suggests the following summary insights:

• Family trees and genealogy charts provide proper names, dates, and connections.
• Family histories provide stories and bring those names to life.

I get the sense my dad isn't unusual in his feeling that he has to include absolutely every niggly detail. Fulford returns to this theme again about 40 pages later (pp. 84-86):

Genealogy is one thing, family history is another. Genealogy is constructing a chart, while family history is painting a picture.

Family history is enhanced by research, but it does not require it. We should immerse ourselves in the joyful act of remembering and writing our memories down. . . .

There is a segment on a TV show that drives me crazy. The host mentions hit songs, fads, and events that happened in a three-year span. Then the show switches to a commercial during which viewers guess the correct year.

Slap me with the history stick, but I don't really care. I just don't feel the exact year is that important. I find nothing sinful about phrases such as "I'm not sure I have this absolutely correctly . . ." Or "I remember something about . . ."

I remember "Up on the Roof" by the Drifters, and how [my best friend] Lindsey used to call and tell me to quick turn on my turquoise-blue radio. I'd stick my head out my bedroom window and breathe fresh air with the Drifters singing.

Was it spring air or was it summer era? It was a winter air, decades later, when the pianist, at my request, played "Upon the Roof" at the funeral for Dad. We, the family, had not made our entrance yet, but Lindsey was there, and seated. She told me she heard it.

That's the history I feel equipped to tell.

Insights:

• Do not be overly concerned with precision.
• You do not have to get every date and time perfectly.
• Family history involves storytelling rather than the specificities of years. It utilizes memory more than research.

*******

One last piece of advice I'd like to share--just to illustrate the kind of friendly coaching Fulford offers. This is from pp. 103-104:

My previous job [was] at an alternative paper. . . . it was a wonderful place to work with a small, funny, brilliant staff.

Our most liberating statement was "We're not the newspaper of record." This did not mean we did not have to be accurate, it just meant we didn't need to be humorless and all-inclusive. If something was happening at city hall, we could choose to write about the quirkier aspects of the story. We could doodle on top of the straight lines constructed by the local daily. They were the announcers; we were the color people. We could concentrate on the nuts rather than the bolts.

You are not the newspaper of record, either. Someone has already written about the Great Depression, the labyrinthine medical system, and World War II. What your readers want to know, the story only you can tell them, is what those days were like for you, what you saw, and how you were affected. . . .

Are you particularly careful with your money because of your family's experiences in the 1929 stock market crash? Do your children or your children's children agree with you about the value of a dollar? Do they think the way you do about long distance telephone charges? Do they buy designer clothing when you think store brands would do?

Have you ever had to summon 911 in an emergency? What conversations have you overheard in your doctor's waiting room? . . .

Do not feel that you must recount the history of the world. If you put down your experiences, you are adding your individual insight. You are making history interesting and human.

My great-grandmother called her best friends "Mrs." The newspaper of record would not tell me that.

Insights:

• Using everyday detail as fact, you add a layer to the history of civilization.
• You are not the newspaper of record. It is not up to you to provide a vast overview.

*******

Throughout One Memory at a Time, Fulford offers illustrates how she uses the questions in To Our Children's Children to elicit stories, to bring her own or someone else's mind to think of minor but telling details of life--details that bring back memories in all their color. . . . We just have to let our minds play a little bit--either with the questions as asked, or via slightly altered versions of the questions.

So one more quote from One Memory at a Time (pp. 121-123).

Fulford begins by quoting one of the questions from To Our Children's Children:

What is your favorite Campbell's soup?

I love this question because it is self-effacing and boundless. Soup bubbles on the back burner of our collective psyche. I've heard wonderful answers to this question--utterly different stories--and each makes absolute sense.

One young reporter at a large metropolitan newspaper said that her favorite soup was . . . I forget.

See, it's not really the soup; it's the story.

But let's say her favorite soup was tomato.

This reporter said that years ago, when she was a little girl, she had a working mother. Working mothers were fairly rare in her community, but her mother's job gave this child, this woman reporter, something she didn't realize until she sat down and thought a moment about Campbell's soup.

She made dinner for herself some nights as a little girl. She remembered that, on those evenings, she would usually make soup. She'd open the can by herself, heat the soup by herself, pour it into her own bowl and eat it. Years later, the reporter saw soup as a source of the independence that made her proud as a girl, and prepared to do whatever was called for as a woman.

Another reporter remembered lobster bisque as his favorite soup (though it wasn't Campbell's lobster bisque). He remembered lobster bisque that he ate his first time at the Atlantic shore. He was on vacation with another family and they had all been to this shoreline before. He had not. He felt out of place and homesick. Then someone in the family handed him this pink-orange soup. Suddenly he had shared experience; he felt welcomed. A simple question about Campbell's soup sent him on a meaningful vacation again.

An older woman read the question and recalled the time that she . . . ate Campbell's soup every meal of every day. She moved to Manhattan straight out of college, having no idea how expensive it would be to live there. She needed to save her money for a winter coat and Campbell's soup was her savings plan.

A mother sent her son off to college with the requisite lessons on laundry and cleaning and cooking. But he phoned home with an urgent question. He'd been to supermarket after supermarket and nowhere can you find that Mason brand soup his mom served at home. Of course he couldn't. She put it up herself, in Mason jars.

Insights:

• Pick any question to work on. If you don't like that one, pick again.
• Not every question needs to be answered, and they needn't be answered in any certain order.
• Your answer may be something only partially related to the question. That's fine. A memory is a memory, a story is a story.

I hope the snippets I've shared from To Our Children's Children and One Memory at a Time inspire you to want to get to work on your own family's history . . . maybe to interview your parents or, at least, to begin writing (or dictating/narrating . . . into a microphone, for transcription) your stories.

With resources like these, I don't think you can miss.

While you're waiting to receive your copies, perhaps the Campbell’s soup question can inspire you. Or perhaps some of these questions (from the "Your Family and Ancestry" section of To Our Children's Children):

• Did you play with your cousins? (Did you even have cousins?)
• Did your family take vacations? Did you go to the same place every year; a summer house or resort?
• Do you remember any special stories your grandmother or grandfather told you? Did you sit on a lap when you heard the stories, or side-by-side on the couch, where did you hear them when you and your grandparents were walking hand in hand, taking a stroll?
• What was your parents’ relationship like? would you describe it as a warm? Formal? Loving? Stern? Demonstrative? Stereotypically male/female, or more unusual and equitable?
• Did your grandparents live nearby? How often did you visit their home? Did their home have a special cooking smell? Onions? Cookies? What did their couch feel like? How big was the kitchen?