Why Personal History Matters

 Ellis and Lucille had picked the worst possible time to marry and start a family.  They had also picked the worst possible place.  They were dry land wheat farmers in Eastern Colorado and had started all these endeavors just before the beginning of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. They lost the farm, moved into the nearby town of Wray, Colorado and Ellis began hiring himself out as a day-laborer.  Lucille was pregnant with their fourth child when Ellis found regular work helping to unload box cars at the railroad yard.  That was where the accident happened.

Ellis was working a pulley when the rope broke and the metal chassis of a car came down on him, breaking his back.  He would be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.  The family lived hand to mouth for years.  Slowly (I can not imagine how slowly) Ellis started a knife sharpening business in his garage.  Lucille opened a flower shop out of the front room of their house.  Every child in the family eventually got a paper route, coming home from the winter deliveries to the ever-present bowl of oatmeal, hanging their wet mittens over the stove to dry before they put them on again and headed for school.   

As the children grew up and got jobs (three went to college, one with a master's degree, one with a doctorate) their first paycheck was always spent on some appliance to make their mother’s life a bit easier.  Children and grandchildren all knew that their first obligation in this life was to give back to the two people who kept going, raised a family, and grew old with humor and optimism in the face of devastating adversity. 

I knew these people quite well.  They were the grandparents of my first husband, and my admiration of them bordered on awe. 

You probably have known similar strong people in your family.  Stories like this have been shared by other friends.  Many families have stories of personal courage, resolution in the face of deprivation, heroism and strength when hope seems to be gone.  To be honest, such stories are usually interspersed with wry tales about the inevitable family “ne’er-do-well."  Most every family has those as well.  We usually learn from both.

The point being that while not every story has a moral, they all tell us something about how we got where we are.  We can see the best and the worst of our lineage.  They can teach us how to overcome loss, start over, work for better and accept what comes.  Our family’s history can show us the best of ourselves as well as the worst.  They can be a cautionary tale of what we want to avoid.  They can also be an ode to joy, showing us the kind of person we can be if we try as hard as our forebears. 

The history of our nation is like this.  To try to eliminate all reference to our times of moral failure (like slavery) is to cheapen every victory, making it seem as if it came with the effortlessness of gods.  It also implies that we cannot love our country unless it has been perfect from its inception.  This makes as much sense as saying you can only love your children if they never disappoint you.  If only perfection can be loved, we are, indeed, living lives of quiet desperation. 

We must preserve and share all our history.  The victories that show character.  The dark times that show us giving in to our demons.  The recoveries that show truth conquering fear.  We will all be better for an exegesis of our national, family and personal history. 

Erase nothing, learn from everything.  Keep the faith.