Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Ancestral Undergarments

November 25, 2009

Does your new generation treasure family legend and lore?

Talk Is Best Living Bequest

A chain of memory bright and unbroken – yet another good thing we have in Girl Child’s sixth year.

I vividly remember being six, as she will remember. And one day a new child will want to know how things were back when she grew up, just as she wants to know what it was like for Minerva and me.   

But GC needs better pasts than her parents’, which she seems to regard as second-tier.

This holiday week she gets the prime, precious stuff, all she wants, as we have her two Grandmas onsite. (The Grandfathers have already shuffled off, as we guys do).

And, bet on it, GC will hit up Grandma D for the story about how, when she was a girl, the elastic that held up her bloomers failed.  

GC knows the silly thing as well as Grandma, but she loves re-hearing it, other old faves, and new material. 

Truth, most of our stories aren’t worth retelling except within the family circle. Yours probably aren’t, either. And, even if you have big, epic, publishable stuff – hardship,  heroics, whatever – they satisfy the same need within your circle.

Children just want, need to remember things that happened before they were born. They can, too, if they’re lucky enough to have ancestors alive and accessible.  

In this regard I was even luckier than GC. I spent my early years in my grandparents’ house, where more ancient relations sometimes lived. Those people loved nothing more than telling stories, which I loved hearing and re-hearing. I still feel as if I have memories back into the 1880s.

Interesting differences in story cravings. GC’s tend toward the domestic and relational. She always wants to know who was what to whom and what they were like – sort of a living family tree.

I, on the other hand, wanted to relive country boyhoods long gone, when kids walked around with .22 rifles and fooled with truly dangerous stuff. Cannon Crackers, man, like quarter sticks of dynamite, blowing steel drums into the sky. Couldn’t get enough.

Interesting too, how GC compartmentalizes. With Grandma J, who is ordained clergy, she looks deep into things cosmic. Mortality, afterlife, the right hand of God.

More places she needs Grandma to get to.

As I post, the females are down at breakfast. Minerva says to Grandma D, “You’re like Scheherazade. Just keep telling stories for the next four days.”

Do yours get enough of the old family tales? 

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