Precious Memories

A family tree that I made in Girl Scouts (Brownies).

It was an invitation to come to a GS Party and

is dated October 16th, 1979.

My mother had it filed in with all of her geneology research.

     Sifting through all if this family memorabelia continues to be an interesting experience. There are some afternoons and evenings that I've become so involved with it that I can't tear myself away.  Finding links on ancestry.com and putting photos and letters together to round out the stories I have been told about things that happened a long time ago.  But there have been some days - many days lately - where I'm overwhelmed by the sadness of it all - by all that is gone and by all that I'm missing. My grandparents, my homeplace, my mother's advice and input.  Memories can make you lonely sometimes.  

     What I am certain of though is that I have some really great stories that I want to tell.  I hear my grandmother's voice in my head talking about her Mother and Daddy and her sister, Marie, and have boxes and boxes of my mother's family research  and I have instant access to historical information that was unimaginable when my mother began her geneology research 30 years ago. I feel an obligation to my grandmother who told me stories and made notes on the backs of calendar pages and scraps of paper about people and places that were important to her.  I feel an obligation to my mother who spent so many years tracking down wills and deeds in county court houses and living rooms and family gatherings.  I feel an obligation to all of those faces looking out at me from the hundreds of photographs I have inherited. I feel an obligation to my children to let them know something about the people who were here before them - ordinary but amazing people who built lives and raised children and had dreams and disappointments of their own.  It's a gift to have this much history at my fingertips.