Do You Know Your Parent’s History?

What do you know of the people who gave you life? Do you know where they grew up, went to school? Do you know who they first kissed? First love? The person who first broke their heart? What dreams did they have when they were kids? Teens? Young adults? Did they pursue any of them, or give up, beaten down by life? Were they poor, rich, middle class? Who were their friends?

Do you know why they wanted to have you, or are you just an accident, a statistical mark of bad luck or poor choice? You aren’t all that hot to know some of this, are you? Oops! But still, aren’t you at least curious? What is your plan, when your own children and grand children ask you who they were? You’ll guess? Lie? Make up something that sounds passable? What do you know about your grand parents? Your great grand parents? Wouldn’t it be neat to know something deeper than when they were born and when they died?

People do live somewhat between the beginning and the end! Why should your personal family history be less known that the history of the ancient Mayans? You don’t have to condem your family’s future generations to grappling with a mystery, an enigma. If it’s not too late, sit down with something to write on, or drag out a recorder, and ask them, for God’s sake, everything you can think of. My mother is ninety two, and lived a remarkable life. I sat down and asked her to describe a typical day in her childhood, on the old farm. From saving two siblingings from a firey death when their house burned, to being one of the Rosie the Riveters in WWII, she packed a lot of living into all those years.

Likely your parents did too. Ask them. They don’t think anything they did was special, but you will! Record it, to pass it on. Your descendants will thank you. If they leave you money, it won’t be worth all that much. Knowing your history, where you came from will be worth a lot more. Trust me; I know who my great to the fifth grandfather traveled with from Rotterdam to Baltimore Maryland, in seventeen fifty.  You’d likely be amazed by your own history, if you knew it, even if someone in your family got hung for stealing chickens. Don’t ask, you just would!

Jack