In uncertain times, we need an anchor, something unchangeable that we can cling to. It helps to have reminders that people have gone through hard times before now, and survived. My granddaughter and I are interested in genealogy. She has traced one line of our ancestry back to the 1400s. Now, that’s a long time ago.
These records are just bare facts, but behind each fact is a person, a living individual with dreams, hopes, triumphs and disappointments. Between the date of birth and the date of death, this boy or girl, man or woman, lived through a certain time in history.
For every recorded date, there is a story. I know that my great-grandfather played the fiddle and his wife made certain he never played at dances. I know that my grandmother loved to quilt. When my grandmother’s aunt, along with her mother and friends, gathered at her house to put together those bright pieces of material with tiny hand-sewn stitches, the children, Mom included, liked to hide under the quilt and listen to the women visit. It is easy to picture those long ago ladies gathered in the living room at Etta during the winter months, a wood fire roaring in the fireplace, catching up on neighborhood news. That love of quilting has been bequeathed to many of my grandmother’s descendants but not, I’m afraid, to this descendant.
It seems appropriate that the most recent records of my family are in Mom’s Bible because the Bible is a record too. The Bible tells where we came from and, ultimately, where we are going. It is a plan for successful living, as well as a warning about what happens to those who stray from that planned path given to us by God.
Continuity, belonging, a sense of who I am–these are what my mother’s records provide. No matter where on earth I might travel, I know where I came from. Through perilous times, challenges and uncertainty, I have a reminder that this, too, shall pass. I know because it’s all recorded, in my mother’s Bible.
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