A couple weeks ago, I did a lunch time lecture for a room full of local folks on my family story. You can watch it here. It was a followup to a feature in CommonGround Magazine that came out a year ago. I am fortunate to be a first generation American (my Mom was born in Italy) and to know a lot about my Mom’s family. Following the lecture, things got interesting.
To make a long story short, all kinds of people popped out of the woodwork to either ask me questions about my family or, much more commonly, to tell me about theirs. The same thing happened when the magazine feature came out. The experience was a little overwhelming, even surreal. The cake was taken by a ditzy but very nice lady who pinned me in my cubicle at work and asked me innumerable detailed questions about every Italian-American cultural cliché imaginable:
“Now, aren’t they all good cooks?”
“Was your family in the Mafia?”
“They eat a lot of garlic, don’t they?”
“Aren’t they all stonemasons?”
“Don’t they drink a lot of wine?”
“Why do they talk with their hands?”
…and so on. Mercifully we didn’t get to personal cleanliness or to the size of reproductive organs, but we pretty much covered everything else. I was trapped in my seat, and cringed until I thought I might crawl out of my own skin. It was a little like being in a scene from “Borat”.
Most of my other encounters were poignant and emotional; reflections on beloved ancestors now long gone, and the circumstances of their lives. These stories came not just from Italian Americans, but from all kinds of people. They just wanted to talk about their families and about where and who they came from.
Both my feature article and my talk seem to have struck an unexpected nerve. People, including those who express almost no interest in history, are powerfully affected by and interested in the stories of their own families. I think I know why.
As I’ve peered under the rugs and in the attics and basements of my own family history, I keep running into reflections of my own life and personality and those of my living or recently departed ancestors. A love of good writing and nature is reflected in some little notebooks my Grandfather kept in the 20’s, as well as in the course of my own life. My Mom’s kindness, my Aunt’s calm wisdom, my Uncle’s joie de vivre, not to mention all of their personal demons were visible in their parents and can still be seen in their children. There are instances when you hear a revealing family story from a cousin, a story that is 50 years old or more, and you look in the mirror as you brush your teeth the next morning, and you stare into your own eyes and think “Ahh-hah!”
Discovering your ancestors is a personal encounter with the past; your own past. History isn’t dusty and remote when it cuts so close to the bone. Those people staring out at you in the black and white photos can impart considerable and weighty insight, if asked the right questions. They can tell you who you are.
