Telling Stories

The way I convinced Universe Man to give “The Chosen” another try was by telling him that it takes place in the same place that Grandma grew up. My children are hungry for information about how I grew up, how the LSH grew up, how our parents grew up. A couple of weeks ago we all ate cookies that used to be a special treat when I was growing up. They didn’t taste as good to me now as they did then, but who knows if that is memory or if the cookies really did change somewhere along the way?

The funny thing about the cookies is that my Dad doesn’t remember them at all, and I don’t know if my sister and brother do either. I wonder how many things there are that only I remember, how many things there are about my childhood that I might not think to pass on.

I realize now that I actually know very little about my mother’s childhood. All I have are snapshots, vignettes. And there is no one now alive who can tell me. I was shocked to learn this summer from my mother’s cousin that all of the cousins used to get together every week when they were growing up at their grandparents house (or maybe it was just the grandmother by that time – I’m not sure). She showed me some pictures from one of these gatherings and said that my mother would have been there but wasn’t in that picture. My mother never mentioned anything like that. In fact, she never talked about her grandparents at all.

All I can do is tell my children the stories I do know, tell them my own memories, tell them the stories of things that they don’t remember because they were too young, tell them stories of someone they no longer remember or never met. The story about my mother taking Universe Man to the wrong hospital the day Mr. Personality was born. The story about Universe Man eating pistachio ice cream with my mother. That he read to her, though he can’t remember it, that she saw Mr. Personality the day he was born and saw him walk and talk before she died.

Memory is all there is now, and it isn’t enough. It will never be enough.