by April Moore
May 30, 2021
A few months ago, here at HUU, I expressed a great joy about something that had unexpectedly come into my life—a folder of my mother’s writings from long ago. Apparently, when I’d received the folder a couple of years ago from my sister, I’d stashed it in a closet and forgotten all about it. But a couple of months ago I came across it.
This folder was stuffed with more than 40 typed stories and essays. From the return address on the first page of each one, I could tell that the writings spanned decades, from the late 1930s to the mid-1970s.
I realized I held in my hands a treasure, the fruits of my mother’s creative efforts over much of her adult life.
Oh, my God! Reading these stories has had a profound effect on my heart.
For starters, the quality of Mom’s writings stunned me—many were expertly structured, beautifully worded, and insightful. My mom was truly an artist, and I had never realized it!
But it is the way these stories restored my parents to me that had the profound impact on my heart. Although both my parents died a long time ago, I am re-experiencing them, vividly, at different stages of their lives. For instance, I can see my dad through my mom’s loving eyes, as a young man, and then as the more mature man he was during my childhood.
And reading a harrowing account of how a moment of carelessness by my parents when they were young nearly cost my sister her life when she was just three years old. Mom wrote poignantly about that brush with tragedy and how it changed her as a mother.
I learned how my dad very tenderly bolstered and encouraged my mom, who was a shy person, in their early years together.
And I laughed to read Mom’s description of me as a newborn, ‘6 ½ pounds of dynamite, plump, strong, with the lungs of a well-developed opera singer and the appetite of a tapeworm.’
While these stories are bringing both my parents back to life, it’s my mother, the writer, who is revealing more than I ever knew about her when she was alive. These stories show her in various stages of adulthood, and some go back even further, to her adolescence, when she lost her father suddenly to a stroke, and to her childhood, when, previously unknown to me, she met, and was tenderly treated by, a Native American princess. This reconnecting with my parents has moved me to tears.
These stories not only give me my parents back, but because of these stories, I am seeing my parents from a whole new perspective. A child’s perspective on their parents is always particular, and limited. But Mom’s writings have expanded my perspective. They’ve enabled me to see my parents and their lives over the course of time, from their late 20s into their 60s.
Sometimes reading Mom’s stories tears my heart open. My parents feel so vivid that I miss them acutely. And I feel very grateful to them. They were kind, intelligent, stable, and loving, and they gave me a great start in life.
In addition to writing about herself, and my dad, and my sister, and me, Mom also wrote about her own parents, whom I never knew. Reading about them has enriched my sense of having valued ancestors.
For example, my mom’s father, who died, as I mentioned, when Mom was a young teen, came to life as her fictional character Hans. Like Mom’s actual father, Hans was a Swedish immigrant farmer, with little formal education.
Mom’s story about Hans showed me a man worn by decades of hard work and the unrelenting unpredictability of making a living from farming. Nonetheless, Hans had a great spirit and was unbowed by life’s difficulties. One brief description of him told me a lot. “He did not know the word ‘integrity,’ but he had lived it all his life, not because honesty was the best policy, but because for him it was unthinkable to be anything else.”
So my grandfather’s integrity is part of my heritage. And Hans, or Karl in real life, is more alive for me than he’d ever been before—not, like my mom, a ‘lost loved one,’ but still a gift as a valued ancestor.
I am grateful for my mom’s gift—it keeps her and several other lost loved ones very much alive in my heart. And her gift is one I am eager to pass on to the next generation. As I finish reading each of her pieces, I add it to a binder that I am assembling chronologically. When it’s complete, I’ll make copies for the younger generation in the family.
My son has expressed great interest in reading the work of his Granny, who died when he was only 9. I love picturing him, a writer himself, experiencing his Granny’s creativity, and his getting to know family members he never met, including his Grandpa, my dad.
So, I am creating an heirloom, which I define as something passed on to future generations that they will experience as ‘something of value.’ My mother hadn’t intended, with this folder of writings, to create an heirloom, but she sure did because it’s been a great gift to me.
As I think about what a gift Mom’s stories have been to me, I know that I too would like to pass on something of value to future generations. After all, it won’t be that long before I too am one of the ‘lost loved ones.’ What can I pass on that will be meaningful to the coming generations, that they will be glad to receive?
Well, I know I WON’T be passing on a trove of creative fiction because I lack my mother’s talent.
But what I do have to share, and what I long to share, with those to come, is family history and family lore. There are many family stories—real happenings and events—some going back as many as three generations, that currently live only in my head.
When I was a kid, I heard, or was told, many true stories from the lives of my parents and grandparents, and even great-grandparents. For some reason, these long-ago happenings have stuck in my mind like glue all these years. I am pretty sure most of these family stories are not known by any of my relatives.
I always loved hearing such stories, and I feel confident that when I have these rich bits of family culture collected—and written up—they will be ‘something of value’ to my descendants. At least some of them, enough that I’m excited to take on the task of putting together the best anthology for that purpose that I can.
And it will meet a need of mine too. These many bits of family history feel too touching, too funny, too inspiring, too revealing of family traits to let them die.
I want to get these pieces of family lore on paper for my living relatives, and I especially want to share them with those to come. I can give those who come after me, whose connection with the previous generations is more tenuous than mine, a flavor and some knowledge of their ancestors.
In addition to writing up the true family stories that live in my mind, I am planning to interview my relatives of my generation–my sister and my cousins—to collect any pieces of family lore that they might know and be up for sharing.
It feels like a creative challenge that’s suited to my interests—like in family lore—and to my skills gained from years of experience as a reporter, editor, and writer.
And I think it will be good for my heart, to immerse myself in a good feeling about family—both looking backward to the family I came from and forward to the people for whom I will be creating this gift.
Collecting and sharing these family stories feels like my contribution to ‘keeping lost loved ones alive.’—I will pass on family lore that otherwise would be lost forever.
And I don’t want to wait too long to start interviewing those in my generation. Most are in their 70s and 80s. I don’t want to be in the position I’ve found myself in before in relation to my parents’ generation, a position I’m sure many of us have experienced, of asking ourselves in frustration, “Now why didn’t I ask Aunt Ruth about that while she was still alive? Now it’s too late, and I’ll never know the answer.”
After all, family meaning, or family culture, is created for most families through the stories they tell. “Remember the time when. . . . . .” Or “As Dad always used to say. . . . .or as I loved hearing, “Our ancestor Jeptha Moore once wrestled a young Abe Lincoln for campsite!” Or what my mother-in-law grew up with: “Don’t forget! You’re descended from Isaac Barancha!” And there are so many kinds of family stories—funny incidents, mishaps, trauma, stories that make us proud. Anyone who wants to give a valued gift to those to come can become a collector of family stories.
This whole adventure I’m on, starting with finding my mom’s trove of writings, to my commitment to getting family stories on paper for the generations to come, has caused me to muse on the great variety of ways people can ‘keep lost loved ones alive’ for the coming generations.
Heirlooms, as I mentioned earlier.
Certain special objects are often passed down in families. An heirloom is not just any old object that’s been around for a long time. An heirloom is a chosen object, often deliberately and lovingly passed from one generation to the next and imbued with special meaning.
For instance, my husband and I have a friend who owns a treasured nut spoon that originated in his family generations ago. Tom keeps it in a special place in his home and uses it only for special holiday meals. For Tom, the nut spoon virtually transports him back to his grandmother’s house, where the spoon was part of the family’s Easter dinner tradition.
For some around our friend’s Easter table who are too young to have met the ancestor, the story of the spoon summons her up, as the object—the heirloom—acts as a cherished piece of family history.
We have another friend who is a skilled woodworker. Marv lovingly turns wood into handsome objects like bookends, furniture, and toys—for his children and grandchildren. No doubt his lovely creations will be cherished as heirlooms for generations to come in his family.
Even objects that were not originally deemed special can become cherished heirlooms:
- Worn farm implements that were used for generations on the farm where my brother-in-law grew up are now cherished decorations on the walls of descendants. And
- My mother-in-law’s paintings are enjoyed by many in the family and will, no doubt, be passed on as cherished creations to the younger generations.
And here’s a story that shows the healing power of heirlooms in families. I knew there had long been a rift between my friend Susan and her brother. Recently, she mailed him several family heirlooms, one of which was a beautiful wooden box that their great-grandfather had made. Susan’s gift to her brother of something they both value from their shared family history, helped open his heart to her. Her sharing of this heirloom, an expression of something good in their family, played a healing role in what had long been a difficult relationship between brother and sister.
And there are completely different kinds heirlooms—like values and a sense of purpose. For example, my friend Laura, who dedicated her career to protecting and helping battered women, credits her great-aunt Jess with inspiring her to take up such a mission. Aunt Jess had pursued a kindred mission—stopping the lynching of black people in the south, where she lived.
Sometimes I ask myself why it matters so much, to me and to many others, to keep alive those who went before, and why it matters to pass on something of value to the generations to come. There must be something deep within us that yearns to feel part of something valuable that is ongoing. We are not just individuals floating about, unmoored and unconnected in a world teeming with billions of people. We want to feel part of the stream of family, connected and receiving from those who came before us and passing on our own legacy to those to come, even to those we will not live long enough to know.
We humans seem to have an innate longing to be part of a story that began before us and will continue after we are gone. Even in our culture –one that is unusual in how little it reveres our ancestors, unlike so many other cultures–we want to connect the generations. Witness how many people have great interest in tracing their genealogy.
As with our ancestors, so also with our descendants. This keeping of lost loved ones alive feels important. The world needs for each generation to feel love and caring for those to come. We see it in the way so many grandparents naturally dote on their grandchildren. This instinctive behavior is part of a normal, healthy human world.
Whatever our forebears have left to us as a legacy, intentionally or not, we can consciously choose at least part of what we leave those who come next, to those for whom we will be the lost loved ones. And I see this process not as being so much about me—oh, I’m a Lost Loved One and I want to be appreciated, but more as a way to do something good for our children and grandchildren and even for future generations we will never meet.
And just as we receive our very DNA from those who went before, and we pass it on to those who come after us, so it is with our legacy—stories, heirlooms, values and purpose. What we pass along will enhance the lives of those to come.
It was in that spirit that in 2015 my concern with the kind of world we are leaving to the coming generations led me to run for office with this as my poster, depicting my two young grand-daughters then still in their first year of life.
In closing, I’d like to share this proverb: A society grows great when old people plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.
I want to thank my husband Andy Schmookler for his considerable assistance in developing this sermon.