"The Season of Stories" (From the Sunday Afternoon Rocking series) Afternoon All, I had asked questions many times before, rarely receiving involved answers, as if the past were past and there was really not much need in rehashing it. But wanting to know, hungry for a glimpse of a world I had not known and far different from my own, I persisted for years, when the opportunity arose. I learned bits and pieces. But one day I began to talk of someone she wanted to remember... She brought out the locket first, almost shyly showing it to me. "Jud gave me and Hazel each one of these before he went off to the war," she said. Jud was my great uncle who had been killed in the Great War. In 1918, my Aunt Helen and her sister Hazel were tiny girls, and it was sometimes hard to reconcile the picture of the two round faced youngsters in his wallet with the ladies I had known so long as my elders. Looking at the locket, I recognized it, and remembered the necklaces those two tiny girls dressed in the starched white summer frocks of a long ago day wore in that photo. I remembered how in Jud's letters home he had asked for a picture of his nieces, and realized that this photo must have come in response to that request. They were photographed wearing the lockets he gave them when he said good-bye. As if the locket had in actuality been a lock and somehow a key had been twisted that sprang wide the doors to another long ago world, Helen now began to bring other things to show me. Over the few days I spent with her I saw the postcards Jud had mailed the long ago little Helen from far away places. I saw the tiny shoes a baby Helen had worn upon her chubby feet in 1910. I saw her mother's recipe book and heard her reminisce about the grandmother I never knew. She pointed out a dish that I had long thought very pretty, but never thought to ask the origins of, and she told me its story. And so in the next several days, stories began to unfold that I doubt sincerely she had ever shared before. You see, Helen had no children. She had but two nieces, and I was the only one of those left. For those of us with children, and grandchildren, I believe there comes a day when we begin to want to pass on our stories, our roots. The tremendous responsibility we feel in raising a child, smoothing their paths, showing them the roads we feel are most "right" carries over into another way of giving as we age. Most of us wish to give them roots, to share with them the past we remember and make them feel a part of it. We want them to know those we loved before they came to us, those they never had the opportunity of knowing. And so we tell the stories, we bring out the bits and pieces of our family past to show, to talk about. Sometimes we are listened to, sometimes our words are politely brushed aside, and sometimes, sadly enough, we realize there is no one that actually wants to hear. But for most of us who have raised a child, the day comes when we try. And so it was I realized what was happening with my aunt. I had grown into what she was now doing long before, but then I had the opportunity of doing so, having grown children. It came to me as I realized her newfound pleasure in sharing, that this was actually the first time she had had such a chance, and actually it was probable that she had never really felt the need to do so before. There were no children she had needed to pass roots to, she had never felt the pressing need of a parent or grandparent to do so. Indeed, she had been confused at my questions of the past, not understanding where a need to know of it was coming. Somehow the locket had changed all that, and now she wanted very much to share. Humbled, I realized that she was noting her own mortality, and trying to give something that would live on...but had just recognized this was possible. I recognized the blessed role I was being asked to play in her closure upon the past. We are all the same I think, though some of us feel that need to link our families in a long chain of memories before others. Some of us note our mortality more quickly than others, and some of us feel the pressing need to bind our children to what has gone before more quickly than others. But we are all the same. We want to know what we have known and loved will be treasured by who we now know and love. We want to know our parents, our grandparents will not be forgotten, and it begins to dawn on us that when we are gone, perhaps no one else will live who knew them as we did, or perhaps at all. For all of us there comes a time when we wish a sense of closure, a knowing that what we have lived was important enough to be remembered, that who we loved was meaningful enough to be treasured by yet another generation. And so we begin to tell the stories, to pull out items from the past, and we are anxious that these be heard. It pains us when we realize our descendents either have not yet had time to grow into an appreciation of such things, or their personalities seem to be such that perhaps they never will. And we are thrilled when we find those who will listen, who want to listen. I have known both. And I have learned that two things seem to make the most difference among those I wish had ears to hear. Maturity and experience with life and mortality, a knowing that death is no respecter of persons and life is short is the first. And the second is parenthood, somehow having children of one's own awakens that need for a legacy of the past to give them. And for those who have not yet grown into the knowing, I write. The stories I tell and the stories that have been told for me will be there, one day whether I am or not, and they will be treasured. I want no descendent to look back as I have, and rue not listening when the opportunity was yet there. And I know more than a few will grow into wanting to know. For them the stories will still be there, in the words I wished to tell them. We are all the same, I think. We want to bring closure, we want to give a legacy. But we cannot force a season upon those not ready to listen. We can only write the stories, that these may be opened when the season comes, whether we share that season or not. Just a thought, jan Copyright ©2000JanPhilpot .________________________________________________ (Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be shared...simply share as written without alterations...and in entirety. 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