"They do not love, that do not show their love."
- William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I, Scene 2
Thomas Paine (in The Age of Reason) took a wicked delight in comparing the genealogies of Jesus in the Books of Luke and Matthew and finding "they contradict each other in every particular." There have doubtlessly been generations of biblical scholars, before Paine and since, who have devoted their lives to reconciling those contradictions. Lord knows, genealogy as a secular pursuit certainly seems to have preoccupied many and still does. I confess there are actually few subjects in which I've taken less interest, with the possible exceptions of theology and professional golf. Like most Americans I know little or nothing of my own ancestry, and could frankly care less. My family has predictably vague ideas of being Scots/Irish and English, but who knows? We are not, I feel safe in saying, of royal, let alone sacred descent. We nearly all have blue eyes and rather thick peasant fingers, presumably inherited from generations of sturdy yeomen cutting peat and digging tubers from rocky soil, but there the genetic clues rather peter out. Our actual family-history stops around the time of my great grandparents. Leave it at that.
At the bookstore where I work, the customers who come in looking for genealogy books all seem to be of an age I am only still approaching. It seems a shame to disappoint them -- they all look to be perfectly nice, older people -- but the truth is that there are now very few books available, as the subject has largely migrated online. There's an obvious contradiction in this; anyone seemingly old enough to care is now unlikely to find the information they seek in a format with which they are comfortable, but there we are. The modern world.
I know that I am, at my age -- fifty two --, lucky to still be able to go where I come from and spend time with the people who made me. It's a trip I make every year. That to me is all the history I need. I can't say the place is unchanged or all the people I miss still present, but so long as my parents are there, I will go back.
This year I went home to help mark the occasion of my parent's 60th wedding anniversary. Imagine that. For better than half a century, this man and this woman have been, almost every day, with one another. They've survived together poverty, disappointment, personal tragedy and the advance and depredations of old age. The day of their anniversary they had a party, modest in every particular, but wonderful for being with all three of their children, surviving family and friends. (I would note that each of my parents is the last of their respective immediate families, and that their contemporaries are few, and yet their influence has been such that their friends are many, of nearly all ages and hold them both, most touchingly, in great and obvious esteem and affection. Think for a moment how unlikely most of us are of finding ourselves so surrounded should we live to such an age. Makes me proud, does that.)
There is a small if clearly quite profitable industry nowadays producing books and seminars, coffee-mugs and webcasts, greeting cards and decorative samplers sold on something called "Etsy", all to do with this one word, "gratitude." Cicero said it was not only the greatest of the virtues, "but the parent of all others." The phrase resonates. Like "thanksgiving", the word would once, and for some still does connote exclusively spiritual meditations. I stand with Tom Paine, I'm afraid, outside any such communion. I'm fine where I am, you understand, but it can make the deployment of a certain, largely sacred vocabulary tricky. The thanks I give, the gratitude I feel, I give to the living. To the memory of the dead I can offer nothing now but to remember those I knew, say their names, and share what I learned from them.
What matters most to me now, I find, I learned not from the books I love but learned before I could read. What I am most thankful of are the people who taught it to me. If today it is gratitude I most want to express, the question for me is not, "To whom?" as I know that very well, but "How"? For the answer to that I can think of nothing but this. It is not enough, but it is what I can offer tonight.
Kindness. Loyalty. Affection. Humor. Forgiveness. Yes, gratitude. These are the virtues I learned from my cradle-days. And before anyone accuses me of being over sentimental even on this most sentiment-filled of days, may I just add: obstinance, choler, resignation, sarcasm, and a tendency to embroider a story, all of which I likewise learned at home. I'm grateful, I suppose, for even those.
To watch my father set my mother's breakfast, to watch my mother smooth what there still is of his hair, I'm thankful for that. I am grateful for what I may yet learn.
At the bookstore where I work, the customers who come in looking for genealogy books all seem to be of an age I am only still approaching. It seems a shame to disappoint them -- they all look to be perfectly nice, older people -- but the truth is that there are now very few books available, as the subject has largely migrated online. There's an obvious contradiction in this; anyone seemingly old enough to care is now unlikely to find the information they seek in a format with which they are comfortable, but there we are. The modern world.
I know that I am, at my age -- fifty two --, lucky to still be able to go where I come from and spend time with the people who made me. It's a trip I make every year. That to me is all the history I need. I can't say the place is unchanged or all the people I miss still present, but so long as my parents are there, I will go back.
This year I went home to help mark the occasion of my parent's 60th wedding anniversary. Imagine that. For better than half a century, this man and this woman have been, almost every day, with one another. They've survived together poverty, disappointment, personal tragedy and the advance and depredations of old age. The day of their anniversary they had a party, modest in every particular, but wonderful for being with all three of their children, surviving family and friends. (I would note that each of my parents is the last of their respective immediate families, and that their contemporaries are few, and yet their influence has been such that their friends are many, of nearly all ages and hold them both, most touchingly, in great and obvious esteem and affection. Think for a moment how unlikely most of us are of finding ourselves so surrounded should we live to such an age. Makes me proud, does that.)
There is a small if clearly quite profitable industry nowadays producing books and seminars, coffee-mugs and webcasts, greeting cards and decorative samplers sold on something called "Etsy", all to do with this one word, "gratitude." Cicero said it was not only the greatest of the virtues, "but the parent of all others." The phrase resonates. Like "thanksgiving", the word would once, and for some still does connote exclusively spiritual meditations. I stand with Tom Paine, I'm afraid, outside any such communion. I'm fine where I am, you understand, but it can make the deployment of a certain, largely sacred vocabulary tricky. The thanks I give, the gratitude I feel, I give to the living. To the memory of the dead I can offer nothing now but to remember those I knew, say their names, and share what I learned from them.
What matters most to me now, I find, I learned not from the books I love but learned before I could read. What I am most thankful of are the people who taught it to me. If today it is gratitude I most want to express, the question for me is not, "To whom?" as I know that very well, but "How"? For the answer to that I can think of nothing but this. It is not enough, but it is what I can offer tonight.
Kindness. Loyalty. Affection. Humor. Forgiveness. Yes, gratitude. These are the virtues I learned from my cradle-days. And before anyone accuses me of being over sentimental even on this most sentiment-filled of days, may I just add: obstinance, choler, resignation, sarcasm, and a tendency to embroider a story, all of which I likewise learned at home. I'm grateful, I suppose, for even those.
To watch my father set my mother's breakfast, to watch my mother smooth what there still is of his hair, I'm thankful for that. I am grateful for what I may yet learn.
Dear Brad you can be very grateful indeed. Love, Linde
ReplyDelete