Sunday, August 7, 2011

The past...

August 1st, (Colorado Day!) Mo and I went on a quest to find the town where his mother was born. As luck would have it, we stumbled upon the tiny town in southern Colorado called Trinchera.  Once there he brilliantly headed to the post office whose post mistress then directed him to her sister who had ties to the local historical society. Fortune hung on a bit longer and she pointed him toward a small rock home that lay some distance from the town that fit the description that had been given him by his mother years earlier... 

We won't know for sure (if ever) if, indeed, it was the place her family homesteaded in the early part of this century but I was struck by how he spoke of his mother, of seeing how this place had shaped the person she became, the woman and mother she was and how it had influenced her raising and shaping of him.... 
 While I watched him steeped in memories of his mother, I thought of the people who came before me- whose memories score my DNA: a Russian-German immigrant, a Canadian farmer who immigrated to the U.S. after his wife died, his daughter who lost her mother and sister to disease when she was a child...
We are, none of us, singular in our experience. We are all influenced by the voices of our past. The stones of the hearths of homes that stood so many years before may not stand, as do these, yet in the deepest sections of our brains they live on and we move within their framework as surely as the earth follows it's inimitable pathway around the sun.  

What stories have you gathered from your past that help you understand more about who you are?

7 comments:

  1. Lovely post and writing! We are indeed influenced by the past, but hopefully, it's not an obstacle but a springboard.

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  2. Family history is always a source of inspiration for me. I'm keen to write some stories based on a few characters in my family. ;-))

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  3. I am always struck by how much harder life was, for most people, than it is now. I wonder how we would have coped, or may have to cope with a life like that.

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  4. Very cool pics! It's always interesting when you can learn more about your past. I'm always in awe when I learn more about my parents and their parents. To say that they had it rough compared to what we enjoy today would be an understatement.

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  5. Very moving post. My husband is originally from a small town in Colorado near Pueblo. I'm the first one to come out west from my tribe of folk, but my brother has dug up interesting tidbits on our lineage.

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  6. LadyFi: Thank you! And hopefully it is a springboard, aye?

    Talei: I agree! Your relatives, whether because they are characters or because they had interesting lives, can be quite inspiring.

    Conchscooter: I was thinking the same thing while I stood looking over the wreckage or their home. My grandmother had a very hard life indeed in Saskatchewan Canada before they moved to Kansas. I can't even imagine the winters there without heat! And what will we do if we ever have to face summers or winters without heat or air condition?

    Liz: Thanks they were fun to take. And indeed life would have been hard!

    MPax: What town was he from? Trinidad by any chance? We drove right through downtown Trinidad as we were trying to find Trinchera... those small western towns are all quite quaint though. Family info is quite interesting. I wish I knew more but my family is hard to find out about beyond their intro to the States which was just in the early part of the 1900s.

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  7. My dad & I lived together the last five years of his life (he died at 97). We talked more in those years than we had all of my life. I learned so much about who and what I am through those talks.

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