The history of one’s family is a tricky business as it tends to be told through the lens of those who follow. It may be celebrated for the wrong reasons, be ignored completely, or in some cases changed beyond recognition. A most egregious example of that is a current elected official who made up everything about his family history from country of origin to religion and seems to be completely unrepentant about it.
In my family this fuzziness was brought home to me in the history of my father. He was killed in the Pacific in World War II, never coming home to meet his new-born daughter, me. My understanding of him was gained mostly through my grandmother for whom he had become the perfect son. I think he definitely was an accomplished person, having won a Presidential appointment to West Point, having graduated third in his class, having conquered two languages, and having played many sports, according to my grandmother, all very well. And I honor him for these accomplishments attained at such a young age.
Yet, all of these achievements were not particularly comforting to a young girl growing up, who knew her own failings all too well and felt there was no way she could live up to all this perfection. What I really wanted to know was if he hated cooked carrots as much as I did, or if he loved to read like I did, or if there was one subject in school in which he did not excel. I just wanted to know if he was a normal human like me.
This was brought home to me after my grandmother’s death, when a small black notebook was turned over to me. In it my grandmother had transcribed all of my father’s letters from the front, carefully typing out each letter. Of course I read them all with great interest, but was arrested by the fact that even with this transcription there were sections of her typing that she had later cut out. It made me wonder if she had left out other things as she had transferred his letters from the original handwritten sheets to her typed copies. Had she left out the stuff I really wanted to know? At the young age of 22 was he worried about being captain of a B-29 and its crew of 10, was he ever afraid, did he ever wonder about being a father before he had had much time to even be a husband? She had turned him into a perfect, cardboard figure which, while being what she needed, gave me no solace.
While it is interesting to find out that one’s ancestors came through Ellis Island, or immigrated from a small town in Bulgaria, that does not necessarily have to define who one is today. Norman Rockwell will never know how liberated my 15-year-old self felt, when I first saw his Saturday Evening Post cover of a small boy topping his family tree. It is done, as is all his work, with his keen eye for the human condition. Is this pictured little boy a Yankee or a Confederate, a minister or a woodsman, a cowboy or a dandy? In his youth he is none of these things ---just his small self with his life in front of him, formed but not burdened, by what has come before.