WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

        Likely you know the 'old saying' that a picture is 'worth a thousand words'.  It seems that I spend a wee bit more time these days looking at photographs of family and friends...usually these are pictures that are at least 50+ years old.  Maybe it is as someone has said, a kind of 'life review'.  Nostalgia has been defined as "Homesickness of the Soul". But somehow that does not seem to be on target for me.  Certainly, I miss people like parents, grand-parents, aunts, uncles, classmates, etc., who 'populated' my life.  Regret, sadness, and similar emotions are not usually what is evoked, however.  Rather, words like gratitude, fondness, happiness and words of that ilk come to mind.  (Nor do I believe this  is Pollyanna-ish.)  My extended family came along during some 'hard times' and were generally not what today would be termed 'middle class' by measures either of capital wealth, formal education, land, housing, or travel.  What did abound for the most part (every family has 'black sheep', right?) were traits like dignity, integrity, honesty, kindness, etc.
    
     Consequently, many of us in the next generation often heard sentiments like, 'we want you to have opportunities we did not have' ...; 'WHEN (not IF) you go to college . . .';  'an honest day's work for an honest day's pay'; 'your word is your bond'; etc. Such sentiments have often been called part of the 'American Dream'.

    My maternal grand-father was born in  1884; my grand-mother in   1888.  (Except they were never  'grand-father' nor 'grand-mother'.  They were 'grand-pa' and 'grand-ma' and this was pretty much what my contemporaries called their own grand's.)  Both died in 1951, within a few weeks of each other.  Though just 13 at the time, I had spent a lot of time in their presence and knew (I thought) a lot about them.  Over the years, I have discovered just how much I did not know and now wish that I had.

    Such as...their childhood memories, did their  parents ever talk of their experiences during the Civil War (his father was a Confederate veteran), what kind of formal  educations were they able to receive, how did they meet, how did they 'make a living' (he was at one time the postmaster in the mill village), what was it like having 12 children (ten of whom grew to adulthood), how did they 'survive' having a son killed in World War II, on it goes.  Parenthetically, I did get some glimpses of parts of these in reading Like a Family, a book about the cotton mill towns in the Southern United States in late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Stories about them and other family members abound in the book.

   

                                                  Soon after their wedding

                                                       Presumably late adolescence  or  early adulthood

 

         The farmer and his wife with nine of their twelve children.  Two had died as infants and the last           child was not yet born.  Bob, the son killed in the war, is on grand-pa's right knee.  My mother is on far right of picture.

                                                 Around 1945, at gravesite of their son.
            I was six and a half years old at the time of his death in 1944 and still have vivid
         memory of the Rifle salute, Taps, and their weeping upon the presentation of the flag.

     This one 'goes back aways'.  My maternal great-grand-father and his wife.
      He was Confederate veteran who apparently never took post-war loyalty oath.


      A definition of 'maturity' is to maintain one's own autonomous functioning while simultaneously being able and willing to stay relationally connected with others.  As a counselor, I have seen and heard many instances of demanded 'loyalty to family' literally taking the life from persons. Parents, grand-parents, etc, sometimes 'let us down' in huge ways. Consequently, others have found 'family' among those with whom they could share respect, encouragement, and delight in each others' lives, whether there is a 'blood-line' connection or not.  While there have been 'bumps' along the way, I am increasingly grateful that my brothers and I have been the beneficiaries of having loving kin who have provided both stability and  encouragement as we ventured out on our own paths.

    I have noticed that a frequent 'theme' in these blog posts has been an  awareness of the multiplicity of 'shoulders' upon which I have been privileged to 'stand' throughout life.  Then, an important question becomes how to provide 'shoulders' for others without restricting their life choices.

    "Worth a thousand words ?"  Indeed.

           Satchel