Family History

I had a very special treat just now. I had been in the process of forcing myself to write a little piece on how distasteful it was to work in retail and have to put up with people's unpleasantries while trying to maintain decent grades in university. What happened instead was that my mother arrived home from an outing that I had been unable to attend because I had to work.

She showed me the few small things she had picked up, just stuff for around the house, and a new pair of sunglasses for driving. Then she went into her purse and started pulling out some small pieces of paper.

These turned out to be family photos, just a handful of them. The last piece of paper I found to be the most interesting. It's plain paper, faded to a soft brown over the years as paper tends to do. There is a green bar at the top of the page, announcing the name of the company from which it was sent. Underneath this green bar are strips of paper, still white because of it's plastic covering, that had been tacked to the browning paper behind it.

The announcement is simple: "Dear Grandma baby girl born this morning, both well love."

This was the telegraph my grandfather sent early in the morning the day that my mother was born.

To me, as a student of history, this handful of small pieces of paper are amazing little artifacts. I love photographs, they tell a story of people, places, times spent together. At the same time, piles of photographs exist, and these, while new to me, are part of a larger collection. I've seen photo's and will always see more.

Seeing, and holding a telegraph your grandfather sent to announce the birth of your mother, now that's something new and interesting. I have no doubt that these papers will go into the others that are kept together to maintain the family history, and I hope one day to be able to show these photos and the telegraph to my children, and tell my own family stories.

History is wonderful, family history is exceptional. This is how we know so much of what we do about the past, because people have carried on their family history. They kept diaries, letters, photographs, for their own purposes, and we are now able to use them for ours.

I want nothing more than to be able to do this for future generations.

Lisa