History – Stolen or Lost

My brother and I were not very close when I was a kid.  He was 8 years older than I was  He was born before WWII and I was born 9 months from the time my dad got back from Iwo Jima. As a result I was just a pest to him and we had little in common other than our family history which included on one side, two aunts, an uncle, one cousin, and my grandmother.  On the other side it included an aunt an uncle, and two cousins and my grandfather..  In addition to those folks our extended family, mostly on my dad’s side, consisted of 4 great uncles and one great aunt and several cousins a couple of times removed.  These were people we saw mostly at holidays, and special occasions.  We were closer to the relatives on my dad’s side of the family because we lived closer to them, my mom’s family lived in Pennsylvania.  During my growing up years, holiday dinners consisted of a cacophany of conversations, often in half English half Italian.  They mostly spoke Italian when they didn’t want my brother, my cousin or me to understand what they were saying.  The conversations around the dinner table was usually my grandmother and aunts pushing food on everybody.  My dad would chime in telling them they didn’t know how to cook and complaining about the turkey, the lasagna, or whatever.  It was almost as if this kind of table talk was required.  In addition there were always stories about when they were youngsters and stories of Italy when my grandmother was a little girl.  I loved those stories and listened carefully.  Because of the volume around the table it was hard to hear all of it because a burst of laughter from the other end of the table would drown out the ending!   Aside from my brother and I creating our own stories I was intrigued especially by the stories of the old country or war stories not often shared by my dad and uncle.  These were our stories, our history !

Over the years, the older family members began to die off, the noise around the holiday dinner tables quieted a little, but the stories were told with new ones about the family members no longer with us.  Over the years my brother and I would call each other to question the details of these stories and to confirm what we thought were the conclusion of events and who was involved in them.  My dad was the first to pass away at 65, then my mom at 74. Little by little the people who knew me and knew my history were disappearing and the people to commiserate with about the details of those stories were also fading.  One by one the older generation were passing away and the family was shrinking.  MY three aunts aged 99, 97 and 96 passed away in the early years of the new century.  Suddenly my brother and I were the only ones left.  We had grown closer as I followed in his footsteps with my career, both being elementary school teachers which gave us new things to talk about and steal ideas from.  At this point the upper generations had all passed and my brother and I were all that was left of our family.  But we had each other to reaffirm our collections of events in our past and often took time out from our  families to reconnect and remember those stories and some of the crazy things we did.  Every New Years Eve we would spend at my grandmother’s apartment and after dinner, at the magical moment of midnight we would all be fortified with  pots and pans, lean out the 5th story windows and bang the pots together along with occupants of all the buildings up and down the street,  I guess fireworks weren’t allowed in New York City.

And then one day in April, 2012, my brother passed away.  He was 74. With his death I had outlived every one in my immediate and extended family.  The feeling of loss was intense but I didn’t quite understand why I was feeling the way I was.  Gradually, slowly I was coming to the realization that no one knew my entire personal , history from the time of my birth up til his death.  Gradually the idea was sinking in that there was no one to remind me of the details of so many family events, no one left to call to find out who was at this funeral, no one to laugh with, no one to fill in details, and no one to cry with over those sad portions of our lives that everyone experiences.  I sat with this profound sense of loss for years.  Feeling a part of me had been stolen, parts of my history I couldn’t remember, but there was no one to call or commiserate with. I couldn’t shake the sense of loss I felt and the loss of protection that my extended family provided.  I sat with this feeling until last Tuesday!

I was scrolling through Facebook on my high school graduation page when I realized that I hadn’t heard from some of my high school friends in a long time.  One girl, Anne who I was extremely close with must have dropped off my feed and I decided to write and see how she was doing.  I sent her a long message to find out how she was doing how her grand kids were and how life was generally in Columbus, Ohio, closed my computer and got ready for bed.  About 15 minutes after writing her that message, the phone rang.  The voice on the other end called me by name and I knew immediately who it was.  Anne said she was so happy to have received my message that she had to talk to me.  We caught up on each other’s families, life in general, and then the conversation turned to reminiscing.  We learned to dance together.  Everyday we would run home from High school to watch American Bandstand and pick up the latest dances.  She asked me if I still remembered how to do the Penguin, which was a dance we invented  and it would only work with Be My Baby by the Rhonettes. We learned the Lindy, Cha Cha, Twist, the Mashed Potatoes, and many other dances of the time in front of her tv or mine.  I loved her folks.  When I got home from college for Christmas and Anne wasn’t home yet I would go visit her mom and help her make Christmas cookies.  Her dad and I had a unique relationship, and i always felt he was very fond of me.  His nickname for me was “Stupid Bastard” which I always took as a term of endearment.  We laughed, Did a bunch of…”Do you remember the time when….”
We were on the phone for over an hour, and we got into a heavy conversation about this topic and she said she felt the same way and then said, “You know, you can always call me!”  And suddenly I didn’t feel alone anymore. I had someone from my past who didn’t know much of my early history but was there during our high school years, which were filled with all kinds of stories and emotions and people we both remembered.  It was a weight lifted off my shoulders that I had been carrying around with me for years.  A welcome relief!

Reaching Back

George writes about his family history, what it meant to him, the erosion of resources for family memories (and validation), and a reason for hope because of a reconnection with a childhood friend.  I enjoyed the journey he took me through as he recounted the people and traditions which created deep meaning for him.  

Like George, but for different reasons, I no longer have access to reliable assets to either initiate these kinds of conversations or to corroborate childhood memories.  But unlike George, I don’t miss them.  One reason, perhaps, is that I’ve remembered those that I chose to and, accurate or not, they fulfill what I need from my past to move forward to live as best I can in the present.  Or, could it be that, not having the resources and thus a lack of awareness about them, I am naively satisfied with more recent memories?

I don’t know what, if any, benefits I’m missing in my apparent disconnect from my early days.  If one would reappear, would I be able to resolve some ambiguous recollections?  Would I feel greater comfort in being able to share past memories with those who were there rather than from my retelling of stories to my grandchildren?  I don’t know.

What I do know is that George’s story moved me to action.  For years I’ve thought about looking up and reconnecting with a childhood friend from high school.  Today, I found an email address associated with that name and sent him a letter.  If this is the same person and we get to talk, perhaps I’ll find some answers to the questions I raised.  Or, perhaps I’ll just have a good time enjoying my old friend.

“The best part about reconnecting with old friends is realizing nothing has changed, yet everything is different.” — Unknown

Affirmation

George paints such a compelling picture of family life, both of his and Anne’s: a chaotic, passionate, welcoming experience. It is a crucible that forms our world view — a human chorus of which we are part. This is the birthplace of stories that we call upon time after time, whether they are cautionary tales or celebratory moments.

But what do you do, when you can no longer share these stories with the principal actors? I can feel George’s lament – and his yearning. After all, what is a single puzzle piece without the rest of the puzzle?

We all have a fundamental need to be recognized. I don’t mean the term in the sense of “awarded”, but rather in the down-home sense of someone calling out ‘Hi There – good to see you’– someone who knows you and affirms you. I think that is the resonance that George found in his conversation with Anne. It’s clear that they “get” each other.

I suppose that’s why I enjoy college fraternity reunions. It’s fun to link up with friends that you made while coming of age – before fully understanding the responsibility of many obligations. It’s not really about getting stuck in history, but it is about checking in with those who shared the same experience.

This sense of mutual understanding sparked a memory of a term I haven’t heard in a while: “grok”. Of course, this was a term used when two folks understand each other so well that they almost meld. What a gift that is. I’m glad George had that experience with Anne!

Side bar: Do you remember the book, Stranger In a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein? The story covered contact with Martian culture and their ability to “grok” another entity. In the 60’s it became a short-lived fad term, as in “I grok you”.  However, it does have some relevance here. Here’s how Wikipedia describes it:

“Grok means “identically equal”. The human cliché “This hurts me worse than it does you” has a distinctly Martian flavor. The Martian seems to know instinctively what we learned painfully from modern physics, that observer acts with observed through the process of observation. Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed …”

Affirmation by Laurie Grommett from allpoetry.com

^{Another face beyond my nose
            smells sensient scent besides a rose.
                 I walk his earth to feel my toes
                and when I pen, I hear echoes.}