Do 'the children' Know?

      Yesterday in a telephone conversation with my daughter, I mentioned that as a second grader I had been hit by an automobile when on the way home from school.  I said it within the context of a topic we were discussing; not to issue a 'news flash'.
To my surprise, she said she had not known that bit of my 'history'.

   Now, she is too young to have 'memory problems'; nor, I suppose,   never was much made of the topic as she was growing up.  But that brief conversation snippet prompted yet another 'musing'.  What else might 'children' not know about their parents as well as aunts, uncles, and other family members that could be 'worth telling'?  Now that my parents, grand-parents, many aunts and uncles are dead, I am frequently encountering questions that I wish I could pose to them.  Not necessarily 'humongous' matters but more likely information that could provide perspectives and understandings.  A Carthaginian proverb said that 'when an old person dies, it is like losing a library.' Perhaps this is but another example of "We get too soon old and too late smart".

    Obviously, there are parental matters that are too 'heavy' for  progeny's knowledge or concern.  Rather, I am thinking more of 'strings' or 'threads' that potentially could help us better understand ourselves and each other, without causing loss of individuality.
I wish that I had known enough to have asked my paternal grand-father details of  how his conversion to Christianity provoked a rift with his Jewish father.  I remember his telling of meeting his father on a New York street and the father crossing the street rather than meet his son face to face.  Apparently, there was some kind of reconciliation later but I know none of that.  Nor do I know how my maternal grand-mother's family became textile workers nor how and when my maternal grand-father became postmaster in their mill village.  I know the story of my parents' elopement but not of how they initially became serious in their relationship.

    And, there is another variation on the theme . . . what do the children know that has been kept from their parents?  If my parents ever learned of my two grade school spankings, they never told me.
(Back in the 'dark ages' of the 1940's, school teachers had in loco parentis authority, that is they could function as parents and if that meant a few licks to the derriere, so be it.)  Nor do I know what they knew of my other skirmishes with 'appropriate deportment.'
For that matter, I occasionally still learn of youthful 'adventures' of my now-adult children and grand-children.  And, like my own parents, there were some of which I had knowledge that I did not reveal.

     Telling and re-telling family stories can be a rich source of entertainment as well as understanding.  By now the story has been retold many times of one brother's scaring the bejebbers out of a camper just as a loon on Lake Winnepesaukee shrieked its blood-curdling call.  That mischief notwithstanding, his being in New Hampshire that summer has been a pivotal point in his life. When my near-by brother and his family and we 'meet and eat', it has become a truism that our mother is always there . . . either in some topic or some expression she used.  Yet one more time . . . Living in the past is not the point. Rather, what from the past can foster healthy ways to live in the right now ?

    In earlier posts, I have referenced Malcom Gladwell's The Outliers wherein he made a strong case that we are composites of many influences, including those of which we know little or nothing.  As a therapist strongly influenced by 'family systems theory',  I have a growing appreciation and understanding of generation to generation legacies, including those that are hurtful.  And when I taught U.S. History on college level, my students researched and wrote oral histories of their extended families in the 20th century.  Many of the students heard powerful stories for the first time, such as the woman who learned of her grand-father's service and death in World War II.

    Whose stories do you want to hear? And, who do you want to hear some of yours?

   By the way, as my daughter noted, I survived my encounter with the Buick back in 1945.

                        Satchel