The day was January first of this year. In an effort to be ultra-organized and with the goal of not keeping unnecessary 'stuff', I had tackled my office, reaching for anything that smacked of 'clutter', determined to toss it. Not thinking, I grabbed the 2009 calendar from the wall,dropped it into the recycling bag, and promptly hung a 2010 calendar.
Segue to two weeks ago, when I realized that all of my forty-plus years of collecting birthdays, anniversary dates, and other important family/friend information had been recorded on that ONE 2009 calendar that was thrown out on January first. I also recognized that I had nary a single back-up source for all of the information I'd carefully assembled over the years. I felt sick to my stomach.
I spent a few days mentally beating myself up and then began the task of attempting to re-create the data. I understood that some of the info will be lost forever simply because I will not remember everything that was on the calendar's pages and I struggled deciding on where to begin the recovery process.
Some dates have been easy to recover from my own brain, other dates were never stored in my head so I've had to search out sources that will have the information I'm looking for. My mother and father kept fantastically accurate and detailed records of their entire lives and relatives......a trait that I have learned to respect and be thankful for and that is where I started my search......in a folder marked "Family History".
My parents were married in the Great Depression. The first summer they were married, they had four acres of pickles to pick by hand, with the profit theirs to keep. The narrative says they picked from sun-up to sundown...Dad seven days a week, Mom six. When that was done, they helped my paternal grandfather pick potatoes, filling five-gallon pails as quickly as they could. A year later they were still earning money the same way, only pickles were now selling for eighteen cents a bushel. One year later, when my oldest sister was born and mom couldn't pick that summer, there were two acres of pickles to harvest. My dad was paid fifty cents for every one-hundred pounds of pickles. Later that same summer he got a raise to seventy-five cents per one-hundred pounds of pickles. He thought it was a fortune. The cash-crop harvesting was just a part-time job for my dad. He also worked for a Michigan county building bridges for twenty-five cents an hour. The narrative notes that my eldest sister slept on the floor as an infant.
These family accounts almost take my breath away. My parents worked hard......much harder than I could ever fathom......and their lives were hard. My two older sisters were born at home on the dining room table. At least a physician attended each birth.
What will life be like for my children's children? I look back at my parents' lives when they were young and I think about how very different it was than when I was their age. Everything is relative, in terms of 'difficult' or 'hard' so what will our future generations think was difficult or hard about our lives? Will their world be vastly different from ours? Will it be better?
I fervently hope so.
Ancora imparo
