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Nostalgia and Roots
Sep. 4th, 2002 11:10 pmMy grandmother was 5th last out of 17 kids. Or was it 3rd? To tell the truth, I always forget. Devout Polish Catholic family, the kids married mostly Polish Catholic straight down the line. There's a picture of all 17 kids standing in two rows, the parents (my great-grandparents) in the center. My grandmother is now the oldest, there are two younger sisters as well, and they are all that's left of an era in family history.
Almost all of my extended family is in Omaha. We are the restless ones, my parents, my siblings, and myself. Others in the family move away for a few years...then come back. I can't imagine living in the same place for too long, and it's with not a small measure of shock that I realize that I'll have been in Atlanta for a decade next year. Five different suburbs of Atlanta in those 10 years, of course....
We moved from Omaha when I was 6 years old, to Connecticut and my first (recalled) sight of the ocean. But I remember Omaha. I remember street names and relatives close to me in the genetic web. I remember a lot, and I've forgotten a lot. It's been 15 years since I visited last, and 30 since I lived there, but strange things would jump out of my subconscious after slumbering for decades.
I have some family with a cabin on the Platte River. We went to visit -- a late-summer day, warm but not hot. There's a lake, then some land with some houses, then the river. I pointed out where a barn should have been. It got hit by a falling tree and they took it down. I remember a huge barn spider lived there and scared the crap out of me. Could that be where I developed the beginnings of arachnophobia?
We walked to the lake, down a gravel path to a sandy beach. I remembered it all, except it was greener then; less developed. Not as many houses. It seemed a longer walk with 6 year old legs. I caught my first fish in that lake, a little 5-inch carp with a bamboo rod on a hook baited with corn. My father helped me catch it, and we brought it to an aunt, who cleaned it, filleted it, and broiled it. Each fillet fit on a Ritz cracker.
Childhood memory is a strange thing. Everything was familiar, but if you blindfolded me, flew me to Omaha and dropped me on the side of that lake, I wouldn't have known where I was. I wouldn't have known that was the lake, just that it was familiar. But maybe not even that. The context was what pulled my memories.
Nostalgia and Roots (in the capital letter sense) are foreign to me. Others can point to their towns, where theaters stood and kids played and trees were saplings. I've been back to places I've lived, and the changes are instant, sometimes overwhelming. I've never been around to get changes gradually. I'm usually the catalyst for others to remark how things have changed.
We checked out the river. An uncle has a .22 rifle and we did some target shooting. My mom was on her college rifle team -- she's an amazing shot, much better than I, and I thought I was shooting well. I watched her, in her hometown, with the relatives she grew up with, seeing her remember things herself as she looked around and pointed out what had changed...seeing her as the catalyst as others shook their heads and raised their eyebrows at how much time has passed. I asked her if she missed the place. Nope, not a bit. She's happy where she is, and not just in a geographical sense. Nostalgia is fun, roots are enlightening, but the present is the nostalgia of tomorrow and today's family are the roots of the generations to come.
Almost all of my extended family is in Omaha. We are the restless ones, my parents, my siblings, and myself. Others in the family move away for a few years...then come back. I can't imagine living in the same place for too long, and it's with not a small measure of shock that I realize that I'll have been in Atlanta for a decade next year. Five different suburbs of Atlanta in those 10 years, of course....
We moved from Omaha when I was 6 years old, to Connecticut and my first (recalled) sight of the ocean. But I remember Omaha. I remember street names and relatives close to me in the genetic web. I remember a lot, and I've forgotten a lot. It's been 15 years since I visited last, and 30 since I lived there, but strange things would jump out of my subconscious after slumbering for decades.
I have some family with a cabin on the Platte River. We went to visit -- a late-summer day, warm but not hot. There's a lake, then some land with some houses, then the river. I pointed out where a barn should have been. It got hit by a falling tree and they took it down. I remember a huge barn spider lived there and scared the crap out of me. Could that be where I developed the beginnings of arachnophobia?
We walked to the lake, down a gravel path to a sandy beach. I remembered it all, except it was greener then; less developed. Not as many houses. It seemed a longer walk with 6 year old legs. I caught my first fish in that lake, a little 5-inch carp with a bamboo rod on a hook baited with corn. My father helped me catch it, and we brought it to an aunt, who cleaned it, filleted it, and broiled it. Each fillet fit on a Ritz cracker.
Childhood memory is a strange thing. Everything was familiar, but if you blindfolded me, flew me to Omaha and dropped me on the side of that lake, I wouldn't have known where I was. I wouldn't have known that was the lake, just that it was familiar. But maybe not even that. The context was what pulled my memories.
Nostalgia and Roots (in the capital letter sense) are foreign to me. Others can point to their towns, where theaters stood and kids played and trees were saplings. I've been back to places I've lived, and the changes are instant, sometimes overwhelming. I've never been around to get changes gradually. I'm usually the catalyst for others to remark how things have changed.
We checked out the river. An uncle has a .22 rifle and we did some target shooting. My mom was on her college rifle team -- she's an amazing shot, much better than I, and I thought I was shooting well. I watched her, in her hometown, with the relatives she grew up with, seeing her remember things herself as she looked around and pointed out what had changed...seeing her as the catalyst as others shook their heads and raised their eyebrows at how much time has passed. I asked her if she missed the place. Nope, not a bit. She's happy where she is, and not just in a geographical sense. Nostalgia is fun, roots are enlightening, but the present is the nostalgia of tomorrow and today's family are the roots of the generations to come.
