Updated: Dec 12, 2020
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Updated: Dec 14, 2020
I’m prepping to move – something I’ve done every few years for most of my kids’ lives. They’re all in their thirties now, so that’s a lot of moves.
Now I grew up in the same house for fifteen years, with weekends at the farm that had been in the family over fifty years before I was born – then moved to the farm. So of course a lot of stuff accumulated. I played with the tea set my mother had when she was a little girl and read books that had been my grandfather’s. There was also a stereoscope with cards to view from his grand tour of Europe – circa 1890. These things weren’t artifacts to be examined in a museum, then forgotten. They were part of my life, along with the stories that went along with them. So I grew up with history as part of my world.
But when you move a lot, the treasures get condensed a bit each trip. I just finally did away with the last box of memorabilia I’d kept from my kids – artwork, report cards, stories they wrote. I chose a few items too cute to lose to scan. The rest, well, no one really cares. And when we talk about our personal past, we don’t always remember things the same way. Looking through some of the things my kids wrote back then, I realize we didn’t always see things the same way while they were happening, either.
We’re focused on the moment these days. It’s reflected in the way we get news and react to it, all fleeting. We’re living in the moment. And if the past doesn’t really exist as one truth, there may be some benefit to that.
But I don’t think that’s the whole story, because all that past I grew up with is still with me in my present, and while I read a lot of history, what sticks with me the most are the stories I heard along the way. I think feeling connected all the way back over more than a hundred years informs my understanding of the world around me right now.
So I’m thinking it’s important for us to pass on those personal histories, to make them a part of the lives of today’s children, to give them a context for the moment in which they live. You don’t have to wait until you’re old. Start an electronic scrapbook. When you make an album of photos from a trip or birthday or place you love, add a page telling about the day or what you felt was special about that particular sunset photo.
Putting words to it will enrich the experience for you, even if no one else ever looks at it. I know. I’ve already done this for my twenties. And someday a grandchild or a stranger may read it and look at the photos, and their sense of the world will expand.
Updated: Dec 14, 2020
At sixteen my plan was to spend my senior year of high school as an exchange student, then go to Northwestern for journalism and become an international reporter. I’d make the world a better place and have adventures at the same time. I was on that road. I was editor of my school paper and studying both French and Spanish. I joined AFS and met exchange students from all over the world. I brought home the application.
But my mother had been a stay-at-home mom for almost forty years and she wasn’t ready for an empty nest, so she insisted I could wait and go abroad while I was in college. That last year of high school, there were few academic courses left for me to take. Instead, my interest in art, music, and drama, which had been largely dormant for two years, came back full force. I never even applied to Northwestern.
The killings at Kent State, a month before my high school graduation, did nothing to change my mind. The paranoia of the day seeped into me. Publication of the Pentagon Papers could have inspired a renewal of my interest in journalism, but instead the content increased my detachment from world events. Then Watergate filled the television and my first choice for president was a crook or the man he’d made look like a buffoon. I did a write-in vote for “No Body” and wanted nothing to do with any of it.
I just wanted to live my life.
It’s a good way to live, focused on immediate surroundings, the things where you may make a real difference in lives, one at a time, or one small community at a time. And that is one way to change the world without taking on the big issues.
Looking back, there have been many other roads not taken, some of which might have brought me back closer to my original intent. It’s okay I didn’t take those roads. There have been rough spots, but overall, life has been full and interesting and right now it’s really good. I’m writing fiction full of strong women, providing good role models. . .but, every so often, I wonder if I’m playing hooky from another destiny.
A few weeks ago, I bought the January 15, 2018 Time because it was supposed to be a good news edition, edited by Bill Gates. This morning it got to the top of the reading pile. In it, there’s an article by Melinda Gates about how women’s movements around the world are bringing about significant changes not just for the betterment of women, but for society as a whole. She advocates for an increase in financial support for grassroots women’s organizations and women’s funds.
The article makes me feel as if there’s more I need to do.
It could be a diversion from projects already in place, to avoid completion. I need to guard against that temptation. But I suspect the road I’m on is curving and will eventually intersect with the one not taken long ago.
Update 12/13/2020 When I wrote this blog, I was working on a novel that used many of the locales of my life as the character went through many life changes. However, the character had taken over the story and her life was much more dramatic than mine. I definitely let that project be diverted many times, but it's finally published: Peg's Story: Detours
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