Unexpected treasure

(1947 Deller reunion--click to enlarge)

This week, when I went over to Baltimore to see my mom, I was surprised to find that she had visitors: two of my cousins (my Uncle John's daughters) whom I had not seen in at least 40 years.

Lest you think we have long-standing family feuds or something, let me say at the outset that I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 first cousins--on my mother's side alone--so it's always been sort of difficult to keep up with each other. I, unfortunately, have always left that task to my mother, who has always been an inveterate letter writer.

We went to lunch and had a great visit before we all had to disperse for our assorted destinations. But this short encounter left me with an itch to look back at all my pictures and files and --in my most intrepid of excursions--into my own memories to see what information I had about my family.

The short answer is that the most rewarding stuff I found was the work of my mom. Letters telling about her childhood, written to granddaughters and nieces, and anyone else who asked. What treasures these pieces of paper are: all that's left of our family history. And my mom is one of the last of her generation who can tell those stories.

Looking at all this, I asked JC what we had to tell about what our lives have been like. His answer--as I'm sure many of ours would be--was that nothing much has happened to us that was interesting. Hmm. I imagine my mom didn't think blackberry-picking with her dad was earth-shaking either, but the window she gives us on what life was like then is wonderful and tremendously interesting to us city-dwelling couch potatoes who get our blackberries from Chile via the local supermarket.

It would be a great gift to our children to tell them where we came from and how far and fast we have traveled in our own lives. Maybe we should all start writing down our memories.