Connections
the past passed along
storylines
I’ve just finished reading
Shifra Horn’s novel Four Mothers, a story
spanning a hundred years of five generations of women in one family in
Jerusalem. Amal delves into the stories of her mother, grandmother,
great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother in order to discover why she too
appears to be destined to raise her child alone. The indelible link between
these women as they share their love and wisdom with one another and the
community around them, runs through each of their lives and upholds them over
the decades.
The increased fascination in
recent years with tracking down our ancestors, getting a clearer picture of the
family tree, is obviously not just for the likes of celebrities on Who do you think you are. Ancestry.com does a roaring trade as I
can attest after doing a brief search one weekend when it was offered free of
charge. Reminders pop up in my in-box, tempting me to dig deeper, but for some
reason I’ve never felt the urge to pursue it.
I know very little of my
family history. I have no memory of my maternal grandparents as they both died
when I was quite little, and even from a young age my paternal grandparents
seemed ancient, so I never forged a close bond with them. My parents too,
seemed much older than those of my friends, having married towards the end of
the second world war, and what their lives were before being mum and dad never
entered my mind until I’d left home and started my own family.
So I tended to live in the
present, walking my own path, creating my own family history, not really
knowing whether previous generations of my family beyond my parents have had
any influence over who I have become. There are tomes of literature, both
fiction and non-fiction, following family sagas over decades and even
centuries, where the intricacies of family ties weave an inescapable web, revealing
similarities in appearance, character and general outlook on life.
All cultures, whether
indigenous or not, instinctively know about the importance of family, the
connectedness we have no matter where we might be. Birthdays, weddings,
funerals, any family gathering is the perfect setting for keeping our family history
alive. Telling stories that produce laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, binds
us together, and provides a store of memories in our hearts and minds on which
to draw throughout our lives.
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